You Other Brothers Can't Deny

Not having really anything to do with relationships and how they tend to unnecessarily impact my life, my butt gets a lot of undue attention. I don’t particularly understand it at all: it’s not like I’m some long lost Kardashian sister, or the illegitimate love child of Jennifer Lopez. It’s just a butt if you ask me. And yet, it has still caused some hilariously weird exchanges in various locations, all of which I can only assume are the direct result of the perpetual absence of a domineering dude in my immediate vicinity just dying to exert the powers of Boyfriend over anyone who comes near.

Once, at a gay bar in New York City, I found myself wearing my favorite pair of white jeans. They happened to have a sparkly lightning bolts on the back pockets, which I suppose could attract uncalled for observation, but this tale occurred while I was sitting down, and therefore the glitter really just had no bearing whatsoever on what happened next. While my friends went their separate ways in the club, trolling for boys wearing wife beaters and skinny jeans, I sat on an unused speaker and enjoyed my cocktail. When I was just about finished with my drink, a tall man of an indeterminate ethnicity walked over and tapped me on the shoulder. “Girl! You got some junk in that trunk! You better Work! It!” And then, after an exaggerated snap of confirmation, he disappeared into a crowd of fabulously perspiring men, leaving me with many a query: first of all, I was sitting down! How, pray tell, did this guy have any remote idea of what my rear end looked like? And second, who even does that? Comment on the behind of a stranger? But that question, I suppose, is one I shouldn’t even bother asking because, as had been established very early on in my frequenting of gay establishments, anything and everything is always on the table (or speaker, as the case may be). So I took it as a compliment and tried to figure out how one might go about “working it.” I mean, what else was there to do?

A few years later I was at a bar in Turks & Caicos. (What a shocker, right?) I was with a few friends, all non-permanent residents like myself. A large, dreadlocked dude in a wrinkled, velour tracksuit had already accosted us, offered us weed, and then brandished his handgun as if it were some sort of business card. “No thanks!” we’d stammered, then sucked on the straws of our enormous blue drinks. Having already shown us his 9mm, however, he was now of the belief we were all BFF and refused to abandon our little posse. In a bar packed with people, we could only assume nothing too horrible would transpire, so we politely answered his questions and did our best to not engage him in further conversation. Yet, while all this was going down, a local walked by me, clearly checked out my butt, kept walking, then turned around to look again. “Girl,” he said in that affected voice all dumb white people think black people use when they want to sound sassy, “You got a black girl’s bootie right there! Uh huh!” Now, to this day I am not entirely sure as to what that entails, but it did finally clear up why back at home in Newton, Massachusetts, where the population of black men is hovering at around .03%, I am essentially invisible, and why, when on an island in the middle of no where, I am suddenly and very strangely some sort of goddess. Here I was, thinking it was my sparkling personality that lured in these island guys, but, alas, it seems it is only my “Black Girl Booty” which apparently acts like some sort of man magnet. It’s weird, to say the least, but I suppose I’ll take it. Why not?

My man magnet, as we can call it, has manifested itself in some other hysterical instances. Not unrelated, in college, a boy I was totally (and stupidly) in love with, informed me with intense seriousness and after careful inspection that I had “child bearing hips.” Oh. Well, thanks! Just what every twenty year old girl wants to hear!

A few months ago, I dragged my friend to a bar in Boston that claims to have Southern flair. But let’s be real here: all I could hear over the pork rinds and PBR’s was “Bah-stahn” and “Cahh” and other various mind-numbing phrases that should never be uttered with a Boston accent. I left my friend to flirt with some nerdy boy who had recently suffered the same elbow injury that she had (omg! It must be fate!!) and wandered around the bar looking to speak to someone who might prove to be at least slightly acceptable. As I was concluding my loop, some guy grabbed my wrist and offered me a slice of his pineapple pizza. I respectfully declined, and as I walked away, he grabbed my wrist again, then proceeded to tell me just how much he appreciated my “black behind.” Seriously? I wasn’t sure what else to say besides thank you, and even that seemed entirely inappropriate. I wriggled my way back to my friend and refused to speak or stand up for the rest of the night.

And then, just the other week, while again in T&C, I found myself the subject of another butt conversation, while a handful of my friends spun me around as if I were in the midst of a Dirty Dancing rumba routine, each weighing in on the White vs. Black butt issue. I guess it would be weirder if we weren’t already at a greasy dive bar on an island, and I wasn’t the only girl with a harem of adoring men surrounding me, and I hadn’t already drank my weight in Coronas and Jager Bombs, but at the time it seemed perfectly normal. I guess the funniest part of all is that despite their keen interest in the quality (and quantity?) of my behind, I know all these guys quite oppositely think of me as a little sister, and wouldn’t hesitate to fight for my honor with only a snorkel and a flip-flop if the opportunity arose. 

So in the end, yeah, I’ll take the compliment as it is intended and happily go about my business, all the while knowing that as I walk away there is inevitably some creepy dude with something to say as I do so. But just don’t think for even half a second that I don’t always, always think more than twice before putting on a pair of jeggings.

And here they are...