Dapper Carter's 8 Rules of Dating (13 page)

BOOK: Dapper Carter's 8 Rules of Dating
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Now the difference with other races, especially
white women, is they feel no need to change us. They recognize right off the
bat that there are clearly defined differences and any attempt otherwise would
be futile. So the statement, ‘It's a Black thing, you wouldn't understand’ actually
holds true. All they want is our companionship and some of this jungle dick.”

"And half, after they divorce our monkey
asses!" Khalil reiterated while reminding Caesar of all the problems O.J.
Simpson and Tiger Woods had faced while dealing with white women.

"Don't hate the player, hate the game. I just
can't deal with the nasty attitude anymore."

"And I can't deal with one more woman telling
me she needs to find herself. She gonna find herself all right. Right at the
bottom of the East River," I chimed in for good measure.

"I told you what you got to do," Caesar
said.

"Don't listen to him. You know that stuff don't
work for anyone else but him."

"My father, a church pastor, I might add, gave
me a piece of advice that I will take to the grave and now I shall pass it unto
you like the Holy Grail. My daddy said, ‘You can never go wrong if you treat
the hos like queens, and treat the queens like hos!’ For instance, if you got a
girl who’s doing things for you, being nice to you, fucking you...treat her
like royalty. But if you got one of them stuck-up, selfish bitches who think
it’s all about them, treat her like shit."

I was stunned.  One, because a man of the cloth
thought of this, but mostly because it was simple but true. Every girl I ever
really cared about treated me like shit.  Jamila Brown in eleventh grade,
Misty Lemond when I moved back from L.A., and, of course, Eva the Eata.

"That shit works?" I belted out.

"Of course. That's Caesar's number one
rule."

"But what happens when you meet the right girl?"
I played devil's advocate. It was an annoying habit I had, but you had to
challenge Caesar once in a while on his various philosophies.

"That's the only snag. The right girl won't go
for that bullshit."  Caesar submissively threw his hands in the air.

Khalil and I sat astonished as we got the final edge
ups on our dark Caesar-cut for me and schoolboy-cut for Khalil. Caesar actually
wore his hair bald but liked to come to the barbershop for the company. Maintaining
a bald haircut is actually more work than if you had hair.

“You know you really should write a book. Sadly,
that bullshit you come up with would probably sell,” I said.

“I’m way ahead of you,” Caesar responded. “Got a
title and everything.
Let a Pimp be a Pimp
and Let a Ho be a Ho!”

“Very imaginative.”

“My second choice was
Forget Them Hos
!”

Khalil paced back and forth like a caged lion,
fidgeting anxiously. Then he blew. Rarely did Khalil lose self control;
however, he was one of those people that stuffed his emotions until it was too
late and he turned into Superfly TNT. "I can’t take this anymore. You are
so full of shit! You never used to be like this. You were one of the nicest
guys until..."

I knew what was coming. We all did, including Rahim
the barber. You know how everyone has his or her own personal “don't go there”
thing? Khalil was about to drop Caesar's and there was nothing I could do about
it. I actually interviewed for the Secret Service when I got out of college. It
seemed glamorous, but you couldn't get me to take a bullet for $27k a year, and
Caesar desperately needed someone to take a bullet for him right now.

"Don't go there!" Caesar threatened.

"He's right, K, don't go there!" I begged,
knowing what would happen inevitably.

"You're the one who always wants to keep it
real, right? Well, let’s keep it real. You were a nice guy until Carmen left
you for that ball player and you've been a misogynistic asshole ever
since!"

"Fuck you!” Caesar emphatically rose from the
chair, stormed toward the door, and then wheeled around showing a millisecond
of vulnerability. "I was in love with her." He handed the barber a
fifty-dollar bill, then whisked through the glass door onto Elizabeth Avenue.

He said it. He never says it.

Carmen was the first hot chick to ever check for
Caesar and he was nuts over her.

Caesar and I both went to the same high school and played
on the basketball team together. He wasn’t very good, but he played defense and
rebounded like a demon. He used the same Rodman-like tenacity in the financial
world to shoot up through the ranks of
Dunham Michael & Associates
. We
remained tight all through college since Princeton was only a twenty-five
minute ride down Route 1 from Rutgers’ main campus in New Brunswick.

Right after graduating college he met Carmen, a law
student at Seton Hall, who wanted to become a sports agent.  Cez was just
starting out at a local brokerage and he was working maniacal hours trying to
help her through law school. He and Carmen lived together and they planned on
getting married after she graduated but eventually her desire to succeed could
no longer be contained.

While interning at a sports management company, she
met this Knick-ass nigga and started “hanging out” and “working long hours.” It
finally got to the point where she flat out said that Caesar didn’t make enough
money for her and she left him.

He was devastated…at first. Then, he decided the
best way to get his revenge was to be a success. He stepped up his game and got
hired by the top brokerage firm on Wall St. and shot up through the ranks with
mercurial quickness. By his third year, he had made partner and was pulling
down about $400,000 annually. He now pulls down about $800,000 a year in salary
and another $3 million in his year end bonus. He had arrived, and that meant
bad news for every woman in his path. He was intent on making all of them pay
for what Carmen had done to him.

 

 

 

 

 

Could I Have Some of Those Crunchy Things?

 

Once again I found myself with yet another aspiring
model at a five-star restaurant in SoHo. I guess I hadn’t quite learned my
lesson.  A modelizer was the type of guy who only dated models.  I
didn’t think that was the case with me, but it seemed like it since it wasn’t
hard to meet a model in New York City.  Not to mention that’s who was showing
me love.
 

Any young girl who was ever told that she was cute
and should be a model flocked here showing up with a dollar and a dream. Most
of them didn’t make it. Only the “freaks” did. Or should I say the freaks of
nature? If you were unusually thin, looked doped out, had freckles and red
hair, were African-American with freckles and red hair, or blue Black, your chances
were much higher than the All-American-looking Suzy from the Iowa cornfields.

Dominique Dunbar was a bitch in every sense of the
word, which turned me on. I had a thing for snotty, nasty, snobby,
condescending, snooty, stuck-up, false sense of entitlement, look down on you
types women. All of my exes were like that, including Kennedy. 

By no coincidence, each was also a Scorpio and I was
an Aries.  The problem with that is Scorpio is a water sign and Aries is a
fire sign, which doesn’t mix because water extinguishes fire.  So my
relationships with them were highly volatile.  The sex was off the hook,
which is what Scorpio is known for, but outside of the bedroom we didn’t get
along at all.  It was fight or fuck. 

 Dominique was a sista-looking sista, which meant
she had to get a perm at least once a month. She wasn’t one of the curly-haired
mixed breeds I was usually attracted to. She had rich, mahogany skin, gaining
her the nickname Black Beauty while she was growing up. I’m not sure if that
was a compliment or not because I knew a light skinned girl growing up, Dawn
Jackson, that we nicknamed Red Dawn and she didn’t take to it very well.

 It’s not that I’m color struck and only
attracted to light skinned girls, but that seemed to be who was attracted to
me. I guess we were able to identify with one another since I got teased so bad
growing up. The kids used to call me “lil Indian boy” and it wasn’t until a few
years ago that I figured out that they meant East Indian and not the Native
Americans that I had always thought. I was also called names such as Chief,
Gomez, and Sanchez for my resemblance to Hispanics.

Whenever we used to play the dozens in high school,
that was the “go to” diss when it came to me and would end the session while classmates
would howl with approval like a bunch of hyenas.

I wasn’t very enthused about this date to begin with
and it sure didn’t help that Dominique was sitting across from me with a sour
puss. The waitress walked past and Dominique flagged her down for the third
time.

"Excuse me, darling, do you think that you can
put some extras of those crunchy things that go on top of my salad?"

"You mean croutons?" she said  condescendingly.

“Yes, croutons.  And could you bring me a fresh
glass of water? I asked for lemon, but no ice.”  The waitress hustled off
biting her bottom lip carefully not to say something that might cost her
job. 

“Can you believe these people?” Dominique continued
to grumble.

These people?
Dominique was uptight, to say the least,
and she had a way of talking down to people, making them feel like the help
even though she was only one generation out the projects herself. I was
becoming turned off by the second as I shook my head visibly disgusted.  I
really needed a drink at this point and I’m not talking about a martini
either.  Wild Turkey would do the trick.  Once again the waitress walked
by but has no croutons.

“Missy, could I please have some fucking croutons? How
many times do I have to ask?”

“She’s doing her best. Why are you so obsessed with
these croutons?”

“I'm not obsessed. I really could care less. 
It was the principle. When I'm home I'll have a salad without croutons. But
when I'm out, paying for it—actually,
you're
the one paying for it—I
expect to have things the way that I want them.”

I guess I could see her point.  Bitchy or not,
I still wanted to hit that.

The waitress came back with a bowl sarcastically
overflowing with croutons.
Good for her.
She and I cut a knowing glance of
satisfaction to one another.

 Dominique reached out to stop a good-looking
brotha gliding past the table. “Hannibal?”  He looked at her with a blank
stare.  “You don't remember me? Dominique Dunbar from Cleveland Heights?”

 “Oh yeah. How are you doing?” He bent over to
give her a weak European air kiss on the cheek, clearly not what she was
expecting. He looked at me and extended his hand. “What’s up, man? Hannibal.”

“Dapper Carter,” I said as he gave me a strong
handshake.

 "How's the modeling coming?" he
asked Dominique.

"Slowly but surely. I just got featured (extra)
in a rap video. I see you're doing well. Saw your billboard on Broadway," she
gushed.

He thanked the wannabe diva respectfully. Not a bad
guy. And I recognized him from the billboard on Broadway in SoHo. He was riding
a classic Harley soft tail with his shirt off and wearing a black leather motorcycle
jacket with faded blue jeans and a pair of Cole Haan combat boots.

"I thought I recognized you," I said.

"I recognize you too. Saw you play in the NCAA Tournament
against Kentucky back in ‘97. I made a lot of money off of you guys that year. Have
a drink on me. Anyway, gotta run. My fiancée is waiting for me.”

"You're engaged?" she whined. I could see
the disappointment in her eyes. A part of me felt badly for her, but another
part of me really didn’t give a shit.

"Getting married next month. You take care of
yourself. Ciao'."

The Billy Dee Williams wannabe vanished, leaving an
uncomfortable silence between Dominique and me.  She looked like someone
stole her bike.
Everybody is a ho to somebody
. No matter how fine a
chick is, there was some joker out there who treated her like shit and didn’t give
a damn about her ass. Someone is running around talking about how many different
ways he violated Halle Berry. Nobody’s safe.

Caesar also says that sooner or later everybody gets
tired of fucking a pretty girl. Not me! I always liked pretty girls. It didn’t
really matter very much to me what their body looked like, but it was a
requirement to have an attractive face. I had to be able to look at you while
we were having sex in my favorite position—plain old missionary. Dominique was
conspicuously unhappy, quietly poking at her salad. I watched her unsympathetically.
She looked so pitiful.

"What are you looking at?" she asked.

I know you're not really supposed to tell a
beautiful woman how beautiful she is because she already knows this information
and it will just go to her head. Dominique was a self-centered, narcissist
already, but I couldn’t take her pitiful looking self any longer.

BOOK: Dapper Carter's 8 Rules of Dating
9.54Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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