Valentine's Day Is Killing Me by Mary Janice Davidson, Susanna Carr, Leslie Esdaile Read Free Book Online Page B

vigilantly held the line, had put them in isolation. It wasn’t fair. Yet they’d each made a vow not to denigrate themselves: No married men reduced the percentage of dates by fifty percent, right off the bat.
    Then, by excluding roughneck homeboys who had prison records, nefarious business operations, and baby momma drama, cut that number by a third. Then, by employing the “no gay men” rule, also known as “no brothers on the down low,” the odds got even slimmer that a sister could find a legitimate date. Instinctively she knew that the last parameter had cast them into the veritable dating desert: No polygamous philanderers who had five women at the same time. No potential STD, typhoid carriers. That was it. Game over. So, they sat together at a place where there were no available men to be found, trying to cheer each other up on the day before the big one .
    “Listen, ladies,” Jacqui said, taking the conversation hostage and holding court, “it’s not about lowering one’s standards. Think about it. They don’t.”
    Tina nodded. “And I don’t care what your female coworkers show you, all that glitters isn’t gold.”
    Jocelyn sighed. “See, by working in telemarketing, I don’t have to deal with jackasses approaching me in the street all day, but working with all women is a trip.” She let out another weary breath. “It’s like they’re all in there secretly competing and trying to convince themselves that they’re safe, just because some fool gave ’em a tennis bracelet or dropped some roses on their desk like a trophy. Every year it’s the same ole mess. They show off their treasures like they’d won some kinda contest.” Jocelyn wrinkled up her nose and made her voice squeaky. “Oh, girl, look, he brought me flowers.” She put her hand out and brandished an invisible ring and bracelet. “Look what my baby brought me!”
    Again, the table erupted into a hailstorm of hard laughter—but bitterness singed the edges of it.
    “Oh, I know it must be deep on your job, Joce,” Jacqui said, shaking her head. “All those married women and airheads in there? Girl, I don’t know how you, a doctoral candidate working on a dissertation about social and economic injustice, can sit in a telemarketing pit with them ? It’s absurd. They’ve all allowed their power to be co-opted!”
    “It’s good research,” Jocelyn said, forcing herself to laugh. “Everybody’s crazy and is a candidate for a section in my paper. Consumerism and the buttons the system pushes to keep people spending what they don’t have, is part of my dissertation. I’m going to devote a whole section to manufactured holidays.”
    “Yeah, but girl, how do you keep your sanity in there with the people on your job? I know they floss their Valentine’s Day trinkets in your face to make themselves feel whole. Shoot, as pretty as you are, lady. The Bally gym body, honey-brown skin, hair might be in a bun to go to work, but it ain’t acrylic when it drops to your shoulders—and smart? If you ever take off the horn-rimmed glasses and go to contacts, they’ll be in trouble. So, I know they give you the blues,” Jacqui argued, laughing. “Those women can’t even begin to deal with you, much less any man—you need a heavy brother, and those are in short supply. Oh, where oh where has the black intelligentsia gone?”
    Tina swooned at the table, showing off her hammered metal earrings, and mimicked the girls on Jocelyn’s job. “Girl, two karats—you know I’ve got him on lock,” she said, teasing the group and pretending to have on huge diamond studs.
    “It’s a farce. One day a year to make the female species forget all the horrible things they’ve done to us for the other three hundred and sixty-four days. I say we boycott!” Jacqui shouted, suddenly raising her teacup, almost making the raspberry zinger in it christen the group. “Reparations!”
    “That’s right,” Freddie agreed. “What is so romantic about