At Rockford a young black lady boarded the Greyhound and sat by me. Her T-shirt read "My boyfriend won't care because he won't know." After a few minutes settling in, she pulled out a pink cellphone and started a 45 minute conversation with a sorority sister. (Assuming, that is, that a monolog punctuated only by "Can you hear me?" and "Are you listening to me?" qualifies as a conversation.) I found it deeply sad to hear of her travails with boyfriends ("I don't need to fly to Philadelphia to be kickin' it when I can find somebody local" of one and "I told him he had an NBA attitude without an NBA paycheck" of another). She hungered for affirmation and couldn't seem to find a guy who was both "cute" and affirming. "I need to reevaluate my life."
Perhaps instead of priding herself on being "open" enough that a threesome wasn't out of line, she should look at her shirt and ask herself if living as a commodity is going to satisfy her need for love.
And then Chicago came. And there was never an opening for making radical suggestions, or indeed any conversation.
No comments:
Post a Comment