Thinking Kinky : The Nappy Haired Diva

The knock was unexpected. I was watching "Boyz N Da Hood" on a very grainy VHS and wasn't expecting company. I'd sneak boys into the small basement apartment before but lately I wasn't in the mood for boys with their anxious hands pawing all over me, with open mouth kisses lacking coordination as they tried to feel up my shirt. Oh, it was him. He was a young man, eighteen, maybe nineteen. High School graduate. He was moonlighting as a mechanic. Mom took a liking to him. She always took a liking to the wrong men. I liked his physique. He was lean and chiseled; the build of a young man who is used to hard labor. I was attracted to him, but not enough to do much about it. Besides, he had a girlfriend who was in her early twenties. There was no competing with a young woman when you are a fifteen year old girl with a mild crush. She sent me to his house to give him some money for some work he began to do on her car. I stood on the stoop and rang the doorb...

I dated some in my day and there was a season of my dating life that I like to call "Chopping Season". That was the period of time when no man was worthy of my time and as soon as they gave me whatever I perceived as "good reason", I chopped them. Chopping someone is as a superior action  word. It's a verb with cojones. I have several ways of doing it. Sometimes I would make sure I did it in person. Other times, it would be a text or a slew of them if I were angry enough. Sometimes I would just block the person; allowing my silence to tell the story. Chopping happened frequently to the point my close friends termed what I did as "chopping". "Did you chop him?" My sister and best friend would often ask. If I was complaining a bit too much my friends would say "chop his ass, he's not worth it". If men were trees, I was surrounded by limbs of lumber. By golly, I chopped. I later realized that I was too hasty sometimes in my dec...