Playing Hard To Get Read online

  “Say what?” Tamia felt something tingle at the nape of her neck. Suddenly change seemed crazy. She’d invested a lot of time, energy, money, and then more money into her hair. Not to mention the hundreds of Indians who’d also contributed to her weft.

  “Your hair,” Malik said. “It will have to go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s not conscious. It’s a shackle. A symbol that you’ve bought into the white man’s image of beauty. That you believe your own nappy hair isn’t good enough, or pretty enough, to wear just the way it is. The way it was when you were born.”

  “I wasn’t born with nappy hair,” Tamia said, stopping in front of Tasha’s new/old abode. “You know it takes some time for those naps to show up.”

  Malik couldn’t help but laugh with her.

  “Why don’t you cut your hair?” Tamia asked. “It’s all long…. Isn’t a man’s hair supposed to be short?”

  “That’s the white man too,” Malik said. “Dreads are the hair of the original black man. He only cuts his hair if there is great turmoil in his life. If he needs to leave something from his past behind that has been locked into his hair.”

  “Locked into his hair?”

  “Yes. Spiritually. You carry the weight of the things around you,” Malik said. “What about you? Why wouldn’t you cut your hair?”

  “It’s too much work. Too much of a hassle,” she said, but that was because she’d heard someone else say it. She’d never once worn her hair natural and had no plans of doing it. It just had no function in her world, and it wouldn’t occur to her until a week later, just before Kali was shaving her head, that this was a problem.

  “A hassle?” Malik repeated. “Who you are is a hassle?” He locked his eyes on hers. “I think who you are is beautiful. Without all of the hair. I think she’s beautiful.”

  “You think I’m beautiful?” Tamia asked.

  “No,” Malik answered, pulling a card from his pocket and waking Tamia from a dream she didn’t know she was having. “I mean, not specifically you—like, all black women. All sisters.” He handed her the card. “Here’s the number.”

  If the front of Tasha’s married-and-acting crazy/bachelorette TriBeCa pad was a schoolyard, someone would’ve run by that particular moment and told Tamia to pick up her face.

  “Thanks,” she said dryly, taking the card.

  “So what is this place?” Malik asked, looking up at Tasha’s building. “I’m not trying to be in your business but…”

  “It’s cool. One of my best friends lives here. She has some kind of emergency. She sent me a text last night.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hold you up.”

  “It’s no problem…she…she has emergencies…once…twice a week,” Tamia explained. “It’s kind of been that way recently.”

  “Maybe she needs to call Baba,” Malik suggested jokingly.

  “That’s probably never going to happen,” Tamia said, thinking of the kind of arguments Baba and Tasha might have after sitting in the same room for five minutes.

  “Why?”

  “She’s…” Tamia started, but then she saw Troy out of the corner of her eye and turned just in time to see her friend grinning and snapping a picture with her camera phone. “What?”

  “Who’s that?” Malik asked.

  “One of my friends. One of my soon-to-be-dead friends.”

  

  “Hakuna matata…and whatever else they said in the Lion King,” Tasha said, looking at the picture of Malik in Troy’s cell phone. She was tucked tight in her bed with empty juice bottles and Lean Cuisine wrappers all over the floor. “Who the hell is this long-lost Ashari king, looking to save a damsel in distress?”

  “Ashari?” Troy said, sitting beside her in the bed. Tamia was on the other side. “That’s not an African tribe. It’s Ashanti.”

  Tasha rolled her eyes as Tamia snatched the phone from her and handed it back to Troy.

  “What’s going on with you? Why did you send out a 3T text?” Tamia asked. “You’re just lying in bed. What could possibly be the emergency—aside from the fact that you clearly need to clean this mess up. And frozen food? This is New York. Haven’t you heard of takeout?”

  “Well, if you must know, I called you two here to tell you that I…” Tasha stalled. “I beat both of you! I’m the queen of the 3Ts!” She stretched her arms out but then one of the muscles in her stomach jumped. “Ohhhh,” she cried.

  “What happened?” Troy asked, reaching for Tasha’s stomach.

  “My plan,” Tasha said wickedly. “I got the operation.”

  “What operation?” Troy asked. She hadn’t been at the ESPN party when Tasha mentioned liposuction to Tamia in the bathroom.

  “Lipo?” Tamia said. “Your ass got freaking lipo?”

  “Full body, baby,” Tasha said proudly.

  “I can’t believe you did it…. I mean, I know you mentioned it, but that was like…like, two weeks ago,” Tamia said. “Who does that? Who just gets up one day and gets liposuction…to their entire body?”

  “Someone who wants to be Queen Bee,” Tasha explained. “I’m a woman of action. A woman of power. Now, I told you I wanted my old life back and here I am…back on track. My old things, and soon my new body. And later, my old business.”

  Tamia exhaled. She couldn’t even respond to her friend’s craze.

  “How much did this cost? Like $10K?” Tamia asked, noticing that Troy was quiet.

  Hearing about surgery and thinking of how much it must have cost her friend, Troy, who once lived a life where thinking of price was passé, was busy thinking of how and when she could pay the church’s credit card off without Kyle knowing about it. It had been on her mind constantly since she’d used the card in the store, and while one side of her believed if she returned the money quickly, everything would be okay, the other side knew better.

  “Who cares how much it cost,” Tasha said. “I won. I won and I won and I won.” Though she was still a little weak, Tasha did a little dance in the bed before aggravating her stomach muscle again and hollering in pain.

  “So what are you supposed to do now? How long are you going to be in bed eating bad food?” Tamia asked.

  “Just a few days. Miller’s surgical methods come with little to no swelling. He said I should be back on my feet in two days. In the gym in three weeks.”

  “Well, that’s good news,” Troy said, though her mind was still far away.

  “So, after I get up and can get my skinny jeans back over this quarter-pounder24—because you know I had him leave that alone,” Tasha said, “I will be expecting you chicks to take me out to celebrate my winning. And I will take cash and checks instead of gifts. Well, a new Louis Vuitton boyfriend will do too.”

  “Sure,” Troy said, looking at Tamia and not sure what exactly Tasha thought she was winning. This was a mess.

  “Now, enough about me and mine.” Tasha paused and opened her eyes wide. “Ts, I have dispatch!”25

  “What?” Tamia asked, afraid of what Tasha might say.

  “One of us is about to get married…And I am not at liberty to say who…but two of us already are….”

  Troy looked at Tamia.

  “What?” Troy shrieked. “Charleston? He came around?!”

  “Wait…wait…wait,” Tamia stopped her. “What are you talking about, Tasha? Are you taking too many Percocet?”

  “I saw him the other day at Dr. Miller’s office and he told me that he is about to pop the question,” Tasha said. “Now, I know he probably wants it to be a surprise, but the Ts have a wedding to plan and that takes time. Everything in the city has to be booked for the fall by now.”

  “A winter wedding,” Troy chimed in, oozing with delight. “White…white everywhere. We can pray for snow! We can have a snow machine.”

  “And horses,” Tasha added. “Clydesdales to bring Ms. Lovebird in!”

  “And doves!” Troy cried and then she and Tasha sang, “This is w
hat it sounds like when doves cry.”

  They laughed at their merriment and went on until the guest list was complete with the Obamas and the Clintons.

  “I can get the Met,” Tasha said. “We can have the entire museum!”

  Troy noticed that during this entire exchange, Tamia hadn’t said a word. In fact, she’d gotten up from the bed and gone to the window.

  “Mia,” Troy called to her old roommate, “aren’t you excited? Don’t you want to help us plan?”

  “Sure,” Tamia said flatly, like she was agreeing to see an action movie.

  “‘Sure’?” Tasha frowned and looked at Troy. “Wait a minute…one day you’re locking me up in a bathroom talking about a delicious and his alien fiancée and crying about how no one’s going to marry you, and now after I tell you one of the richest men in the city is about to buy you that $55K Jean Schlumberger Bud Ring all you can say is, ‘sure’?”

  Tamia continued looking out at the people walking by in the street and shrugged her shoulders.

  “Ms. Lovesong?” Tasha called Troy.

  “Yes, Ms. Lovestrong?”

  “Hand me that phone.”

  Tasha handed the phone back over to Tasha and she looked at the picture of Malik again.

  “Somebody swallowed an Afro-disiac,” Tasha said, shaking her head.

  “A what?” asked Troy.

  “An Afro-disiac—the jones you get for those dudes with dreads, reading poetry and whatnot,” Tasha repeated. “They were all over undergrad. Looking all fine. Big, brown muscles. Knapsacks and bad attitudes. I saw many a bougie sister end up broke, bald, and selling Muslim oil and Farrakhan tapes down on Georgia Avenue behind the Afro-disiac. Look what happened to Erykah Badu! Now it’s happening to our Tamia. He put his mojo on her.” She pointed to Tamia, looking out of the window. “Look at her. She’s hot for him. We might as well get our Farrakhan CDs now. What’s your new name? Akilah Muslimah?”

  “He’s just my client.” Tamia wondered if Malik was back at the Freedom Project by now. Maybe he was in his office. What book was he reading? He was probably playing with one of his locks. Did he wear reading glasses?

  Tasha looked at the picture again and handed the phone back to Troy.

  “Look how they’re looking at each other,” she told Troy.

  “I know. I saw it up close. That’s why I took the picture.”

  Tamia glared at Troy.

  “What?” Troy said. “You two were looking like a fake Nia Long and Larenz Tate in Love Jones.”

  “Just tell the truth, Mia,” Tasha said. “We’re all family here. You want him, don’t you?”

  “I—”

  “You want to ride that red, black, and green flag until it bursts into the stars and stripes!”

  “Why are you so vulgar?” Tamia asked.

  “I’m high on Percocet!”

  “Don’t blame the drugs.”

  “I won’t blame the drugs if you admit the truth. You want this man. You want to get with Kunta Kinte and have a little Kizzie. Tell the truth and shame the devil! Tell her, Troy!”

  “I don’t think that applies right now,” Troy said.

  “Fine, I like him,” Tamia said, admitting this to herself for the first time. “I mean, you saw him.”

  “Yes, I did.” Troy fanned herself.

  “So?” Tasha pushed.

  “So? So, he’s fine,” Tamia said.

  Tasha sucked her teeth.

  “Dang, I knew something would ruin my winter wedding,” she said.

  “Ruin?” Troy’s eyes were wide. “She can’t marry Charleston?”

  “Who said anything about anyone getting married?” Tamia shouted.

  “You did,” Tasha and Troy said together.

  “Now, you can still pull it off,” Tasha added. “But first you have to shake it off. You have to get with Malik—well, first because I want to know if he’s good in bed—and second because the only way you can marry Charleston with no regrets is if you taste the rainbow.”

  “Again, who said I was marrying Charleston?”

  “Mia,” Tasha said, “that’s just the Afro-disiac kicking in on you. It’s like heroin. It’s made you think your new cracky life is wonderful and that you don’t need the old fab you left behind, but I am here to tell you that you had a life before Nat Turner came into your life and you will when he packs up his little ginger beer and vegan brownies in his knapsack and leaves your apartment in the middle of the night.”

  Tamia and Troy looked at Tasha inquisitively.

  “What?” she said. “I had an Afro-disiac once.”

  “So what should she do?” Troy asked.

  “She has to try it out.”

  “She doesn’t have to do anything,” Tamia said. “Because he is my client and…he doesn’t like me. He likes Ayo…Ayodele. Queen of the Nile or the gypsies or whatever.”

  “Is she cute?” Troy asked.

  “Remarkable.”

  “Dang!” Tasha and Troy said, ducking as if Tamia was being knocked out.

  “She’s not his girlfriend…just some girl he looks at like she’s a pan of peach cobbler.”

  “Oh, that’s easy,” Tasha said. “You can still have him. Just turn the tables.”

  “What?”

  “You need to stop being all goo-goo ga-ga over him and play a little harder to get,” Tasha said.

  “I’m not goo-goo ga-ga,” Tamia said.

  “You didn’t look at the picture,” Troy said, handing Tamia the phone.

  “Oh, my Lord,” Tamia said, looking at her eyes practically undressing the man she was supposed to be sending to jail.

  “Exactly,” Tamia confirmed. “You have it bad. And the only way you’re going to give it away is to get that man. You need the Dude Diet.”

  “The Dude Diet!” Troy said. “You mean the one I used with old Desmond Bessemer in college.”

  “Desmond?” Tamia quizzed.

  “The sexy Kappa with the…” Troy stopped herself, remembering the nights she’d spent with Desmond.

  “Big cane!”26 Tasha laughed.

  “Yes.” Troy blushed.

  “Oh, I remember him,” Tamia said. “He practically moved into your dorm room and went to all of your classes with you, but when you asked him to be your boyfriend, he insisted you two were just having fun.”

  “He was crazy. But I really liked him.”

  “You liked his cane.” Tasha laughed.

  “I was young and full of Satan,” Troy insisted. “Anyway, I did the Dude Diet—I shut him down and gave him limitations. It took him less than a week to ask me if I wanted a commitment. The boy was starving…wrote me a love letter and everything. It seems that living without me showed him that he wanted to be with me.”

  

  An hour later, after Troy and Tamia had cleaned the messy bedroom and ordered delivery so Tasha could have a decent home-cooked meal, they were outside the apartment, walking toward Troy’s car.

  “So, who’s going to say something first?” Troy asked, looking straight ahead.

  “I’m not saying anything to her. I’ve butted into her business before and ended up in the hospital,” Tamia said. “Never again. If she wants to do this craziness, it’s her business. She’s a grown woman.”

  “Mia, you know that’s wrong. That’s not what the 3Ts are about. We can’t just let her move out on her family, leaving those girls alone with Lionel, and God only knows what else she’s going to do with her body.”

  “And who’s going to stop her?”

  Troy couldn’t answer Tamia.

  “Exactly,” Tamia said. “She’s not going to listen to either of us. And besides, sometimes I feel a little responsible. If we hadn’t brought Porsche back into her life, maybe she’d be better off.”

  “I don’t think so. I think it would be worse. She was going to have Toni anyway.”

  “Well, either way, I don’t want to get burned,” Tamia said. “I love Tasha, but she’s going to have to work this ou
t on her own. She’ll get tired of being away from her children. And Lionel isn’t going to keep her bank account full for long. This is just another one of her stunts to get some attention.”

  “But who’s going to suffer?” Troy asked.

  “Toni and Tiara will be fine,” Tamia said. “I spoke to Lionel and he’s okay. You know he’s not going to let those little girls go without.”

  “You’re right,” Troy said. “So, what about you? Are you going to go after your hunky client with the Dude Diet?”

  “Um…probably not,” Tamia said. “Does Tasha look like the kind of person I need to be taking advice from?”

  “You have a point, but she does too. You can’t marry one man if you have feelings for another. You might as well check it out. Check him out.”

  “Check you out, Ms. Lovesong,” Tamia teased, “giving advice. What’s going on with you?”

  

  The Dude Diet: Giving Less Love to Get More Love

  You lit candles at the Novena station at the church, asking God to send you a good man to save you from your boring life of solotude. You want to be “in a relationship” on Facebook. You want to play Scrabble in the park and drink wine as the sun sets. You want to sit at the “couples” table at the next wedding and proudly announce that you are taken when they call “all the single ladies” to the dance floor for the bouquet toss. And then, just like that, He (no, not Jesus) appears, and you’re swept off your feet and into a fairy tale courtship of expensive dinners, weekends out of town, family gatherings, and sex that’s so good, you proudly break up with BOB—your battery-operated boyfriend. You’re in love. You give him your everything. You call. You e-mail. You put everything in your life to the side to make room for him. Then something happens. You realize that you’ve been having a lot of fun, a bunch of fun…but just fun and you want more. And then you ask an inevitable question: “Where is this going?” and your darling answers as you expected: “I’m just having fun. I wasn’t looking for anything else.”

  Before you burst into tears, throw in the old love towel, and give up on Prince Charming, know that maybe there’s a way the connection could be salvaged. Yes. You could make it work. You could get more love from that man (or any man, for that matter) by giving a little less of yourself. Basically, in your enthusiasm for finding love, you forgot one important thing—men are predators and once the prey is hunted and caught, it’s time to move on. Now, he probably didn’t have to hunt to get you. After enduring the desperation of lighting those Novena candles, you just fell on the floor and rolled over. Don’t worry, you can reverse this history. Just get up and get ready for the chase. Try these five steps for giving less love to the men in your life, to get more in return.