New Year's 2002
    
Bailey Gentry

   Eleven o-five. Another New Year’s Eve and I’m home alone with nothing going on other than Who is Jill Scott? on my CD changer, and a pint of Haagen Daz mint chip. What I need to do is put this ice cream back in the fridge before these hips and thighs of mine get so far away from me that I can’t reel ‘em back in. Eight years ago, I was a super fit, five-foot-five, 130-pound diva, with an attention-getting apple bottom. (Red beans and rice didn’t miss me.) As my late grandma Lucy Pearl, used to say, a chile was saying som’um. Don’t get me wrong now. I’m still saying som’um—just at 160-plus pounds these days. I can still fit into a pair of form-fitting jeans and tuck my shirt in because I don’t need to hide a fat, unshapely ass. Just the same, I’m not going to fake the funk. I’m straddling the fat fence. I'm about a cheeseburger away from falling over on the wrong side of it.   
        I’m Bailey Gentry. Born and raised in Washington D.C. I guess I’m what you could call a sista going places. A thirty-seven year-old, six-figure earning, family attorney for the black law firm of Jefferson, Bates and Hankerson, in downtown Washington, D.C. I’m also the recent proud owner of a beautiful three bedroom, four bath, single family home in the 1400 block of Whittier Street in Northwest D.C. Besides my height and weight, which I’ve already told you, I’m sportin’ a short, chin length bob style haircut these days. I’ve retired the cornrow extensions I had been rocking for the longest. People tell me I favor that actress Elise Neil from the sitcom The Hughley’s. I think I have a wonderful personality, too. I’m intelligent, attractive, funny, adventurous, self-sufficient, and very spunky. Oh yeah. I’m also man-less. Sure, I know I’m not the only thirty-seven year-old black woman in the District of Columbia who hasn’t had her prize package knock on her door or buzz her intercom—but that’s sure not easing my pain any.           
        I love black men something awful. Love ‘em in all their hues; dark brown, light brown, beige—navy blue. As a teenager, my Jones was for those butterscotch pretty boys. Remember Christopher Williams? Al B. Sure? But I haven’t been on that tip since graduating from Roosevelt high school in eighty-three. These days, I’m on that dark, Godiva chocolate tip. If someone gave me a pencil and paper and told me to draw a picture of my ideal brotha—from a physical standpoint—I’d draw them a picture of Morris Chestnut from that movie The Best Man. Lawd have mercy. That’s a black man beyond fine. He’s foin!   
        I don’t know about any of you ladies out there, but my search for a good black man, my kind of Mr. Right, has been like the proverbial search for a needle in a haystack. I’ll spare you most of the gory details and just tell you about my three most recent attempts….