Randall Crawford   
    
…I got a call from Myesha this morning. She asked if I’d like to go shopping with her in Midtown this afternoon. My initial reaction? Hell no! I don’t like shopping in Midtown—or with women. As for the latter, they’re too damn slow and too damn indecisive. Furthermore, it’s mid-December and 24 degrees outside. I told her I’d think about it and call her back after I had finished my breakfast. 
    Over pancakes and sausage, I came to the conclusion that I liked being in Myesha’s company more than I disliked shopping with a woman in Midtown Manhattan, in the freezing cold.    
    She and I were hand-in-hand, sashaying up, down, and around 34^th Street in the bitter cold hitting all of her favorite stores from Conway’s to Macy’s, and everything in between. I was even carrying some of her bags. We had already been out for what seemed like an eternity to me. I was running out of gas and getting hungry. But there was one more store Myesha said we had to hit before we could get out of the cold and get back to her place. An intimate apparel joint called Bare Necessities.   
   “This is the last store today,” she assured me as we stepped inside the small cramped boutique. “You’re not embarrassed to be in here with me are you?”           
   “Naw.”    
    Truth? I would have gone in any store with her if it meant getting out of the friggin’ cold. 
    Myesha was as giddy as she could be asking my opinion on all kinds of ling-er-ree; bras, teddies, dental floss panties.  
    “You like that Randall? Oh, wait. What do you think about this?” she asked, holding up one item after another for my opinion.     
    “If I could see you in some of this stuff, I could give you a much better opinion,” I joked. (I was dead serious actually.) 
    “You would like that wouldn’t you?” she purred.      
    Myesha was barely five feet tall and weighed no more than a buck-ten. All of it tits and ass at that. Would I? Do ducks quack? I wanted to answer her. The thought alone of seeing Myesha in some dental floss had my Johnson doing gymnastics inside of my BVDs.      
    Following what seemed like an eternity inside the boutique, (like I said, too damn slow, and too damn indecisive,) she finally settled on several items and we hopped the subway back to Queens.                     
     Back at Myesha’s warm, toasty apartment, I quickly got out of my ski jacket, hat, gloves, and scarf, and made myself comfortable. Meanwhile, she grabbed her many shopping bags, and disappeared to her bedroom. Reappeared ten minutes later in nothing but a fishnet Chemise, with matching G-string.  
    Hallejah, let the heavens rejoice! 
    “You like?” she asked, giving me a view of her from every conceivable angle.        
    “H-h-hell, yeah,” I st-st-suttered.
    “Good. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”  
    I couldn’t move. 
    Myesha returned to the living room modeling a different piece of ling-er-ee for me. And repeated the presentation several more times until she had modeled every single item she had bought this afternoon. Then she ordered Chinese. We ate (with her fully clothed again) then snuggled on her sofa, and began watching High Plains Drifter staring Clint Eastwood on HBO. 
    There was little question in my mind how we were going to cap off this evening. I could barely mask the excitement circulating through my veins (or my Johnson, which was harder than my ninth grade Algebra class.) Best part? This time it wasn’t going to be any set-up. No “gift” from Dirk. 
    Now it was time to bust-a-move.        
    Oozing with confidence, I pressed my cheek against Myesha’s. 
    “So, tell me. Who’s the lucky guy that’s gonna be helping you out of all those sexy little items you just modeled?”    
    “Eric, I hope.” 
    She said that with the straightest face.       
    “Eric?” 
    “Uh, huh. This guy I met out in L.A.”       
    “L.A.?” 
    If this was her idea of a joke, she needed to say “gotcha” quick, fast, and in a hurry.   
    “Mmm-hmm. Guess I didn’t tell you, huh? I met him at the FMPA conference.”     
    “What’s that?” 
    “A conference I attend annually for my job. Eric and I have been talking on the phone for several weeks now…”
Um…yoo-hoo, Boo. Remember me? We’ve been talking for several weeks!         
 “…he’s coming to New York to see me over the Christmas holiday. I’m so excited.” 
    My Johnson went limp as a wet noodle.  
    It suddenly dawned on me that none of what took place this afternoon was for my benefit at all, but that of some cat, three-thousand miles away, who had probably been chillin’ in 65 degree weather all day. I wasn’t getting anything more than a hard-on and some Chinese takeout tonight.   
    This was some bullshit.         
    “Thanks for braving the cold and shopping with me today. I really wanted to get a man’s opinion on the lingerie. I think Eric’s gonna be pleased…”
Shut the ‘eff up, Myesha. Pu-leeze!   
    “…I couldn’t have tried those things on in front of any guy. Most would have read more into it. But not you, Randall. That’s why you’re my pal. You’re such a nice guy.”   
    I don’t know how I got here, but here I was again. Back in the friend zone. Same shit, different girl. I didn’t have to go home, but I had to get the hell out of Myesha’s apartment.         
    “Wow, look at the time. That beef and broccoli was slammin,’ girl. Gotta go. Bye.”    
    I leaped off the sofa, picked my broken face up off the floor, and stuffed it in my back pocket. Put back on my ski jacket, scarf, gloves and hat, and made a beeline for the door.

 
Dirk Francis 

  
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….