“Well, we had lunch at Shimizu yesterday and he just said it there. He said he’s too stressed to deal with me right now and that’s just it. That’s just all he said…all he said…”
“Slow down; you don’t have to go on.” She stopped me. “I can’t believe this. I never thought he’d do this. Are you sure it’s not just one of his things? You know he gets stressed and starts acting crazy. Maybe you just need to give him some space. I mean, you’re going to need the same thing when we graduate.”
“No, I’m sure this is it this time, Tamia. I could see it in his eyes.” I threw the box of Kleenex to the floor. Pookie jumped up and ran out of the room. I could hear Tamia whispering to someone on the other end of the phone. “Tamia?” I called frantically for no apparent reason. I just needed a little attention. Comfort. I mean, my entire world was only literally ablaze. Who gave a damn what was going on in that godforsaken library?
“Yeah, I’m here.” Tamia groaned into the phone. “Look, I’m so sorry, but my study group is here, so I have to get off of the phone.”
“Okay,” I said.
“But I’ll be done soon. Have you told Tasha yet?”
“No.” I started crying again at the thought of having to repeat my sad saga. With all of this crying it would be a wonder if I was able to open my eyes in the morning.
“Well, don’t worry about telling her. I’ll call her when I get out of my meeting. Do you want to meet tonight? You know, for the party?”
I took a deep breath and looked up at the dust-ridden ceiling fan above my bed. I felt the unmistakable air of reluctance building in my chest.
“My breakup party?” I asked sadly, half questioning and affirming Tamia’s suggestion. This was because the party she’d mentioned, my breakup party, was the first thing each 3T did when she broke up with a man. It was a tradition we started back at Howard. Whenever one of us broke up with someone, we’d forgo the usual girl grieving stage of hiding underneath the sheets and avoiding all public appearances, by making an official announcement to the other 2Ts, putting on our most slut-alicious dresses, and stepping out for a night on the town. We called it “the Breakup Party.” It sounded crazy to most people, but it worked. At its best, the party gets the man off your mind for a few hours. At the very least, it gets you out of the house.
“Yeah, tonight is fine for the party,” I muttered uneasily between tears.
“Good. So I’ll call Tasha and we’ll meet at Justin’s at 8,” Tamia said.
“Okay.”
“And, Troy, keep your head up,” Tamia added. “Remember, the first 3T rule of breaking up is having the ‘face of grace.’”
“I know. I know,” I answered. My girl was right. We all agreed that the most important thing a girl had to do after a breakup was present herself as if she was together even if she was all apart inside. She had to face the world with grace no matter what. A brighter day would come, although I wasn’t so sure I believed that after Julian.
“Good. I love you,” Tamia said.
“I love you, too.” I sniffled and buried myself back under the covers.
The Goodbye Girl: The 3T Breakup Party Guide
So it’s over and Mr. Right turned out to be Mr. All Wrong. Don’t sit around all day and cry about it. No, this is a time to celebrate your new “player-ific” lifestyle wi
th your girls. Plan a breakup party and say goodbye to yesterday.
Must Haves: A picture of your new ex, a hot outfit no man can say “no” to, huge shades in case your eyes look droopy from crying (don’t be embarrassed; people will think you’re a celebrity), and fabulous friends to celebrate with.
Instructions: Make an announcement to your closest friends via e-mail or telephone—this will eliminate any unnecessary gossip. Just put it all out there and invite your girls out to your party. The location must be someplace really cool where you’re guaranteed to be seen in all of your glory. Arrive late and hand the picture of your ex to your girls so your bitter memory can be torn to shreds. Then let the games begin.
Do’s: Cry if you want to, dance until your feet hurt, wear a dress so skanky you can’t wear underwear, have your friends pretend you’re a celebrity, smile at every man you see, and let everyone and their mama know you’re a free agent.
Don’ts: Party at a place special to you and your ex (bad memories), drink too much and pass out singing “End of the Road” by Boyz II Men, or call your ex…ever, ever, ever.
The Babbling Bourgeois Baboon vs. the Democrat Octoroon
In the car on the way to Justin’s, I couldn’t stop thinking about Julian and trying to figure out where our thing fell apart. How did we even get to the “Troy, I need a break” breaking point? Being honest with myself, I had to admit that the relationship was no cakewalk. Julian and I had shared some hard times and disagreements. Most notable, of course, was the time Julian invited my parents to meet his parents. (Note: Why in the hell would this man want our parents to meet if I wasn’t his “girlfriend”? And he says I was the confused one….) Anyway, though I was excited about the parental union (seeing as how it usually led to other unions), I should’ve seen that train wreck coming down the tracks from a mile away.
The highlight of that night came when my mother, a rich girl gone artsy after her divorce from and remarriage to my father, called Julian’s mother a “babbling bourgeois baboon” and stormed out of his parents’ Harlem brownstone.
That insult occurred after my mother wasted what was left of a perfectly full glass of red wine—something I’d never seen her do before—on his mother’s Persian rug. The drama all began when our parents started talking politics during an after-dinner chat. I need to correct that—they started talking black politics. Let me explain why this distinction is significant. My dad, a retired international pilot, couldn’t give a damn about much else other than his money, me, his money, where he’s traveling to next, his money, whether he has to take my mother with him, his money, and his mother (my Nana Rue) and her money, which someday will be his money. Ask him about the war in Iraq and he’ll pull out his BlackBerry and measure Iraq’s distance from Morocco—his vacation destination of choice; ask him about starvation in Africa and he’ll bring up his trips to Dubai and how well he pays the cleaning lady at our vacation home there.
Dad’s goal in life is to not get his “pressure up,” and the man has never had high blood pressure, so I guess he’s doing a good job. Since he retired, Daddy spends his days playing accountant and keeping the two ladies in his life (my mother and his mother) smiling and out of trouble. This disposition fared well on his good looks that had yet to begin to fade even though he was far into his fifties. Standing at 6’2” tall, my father had deep mahogany skin, and even though his eyes were browner than anything I’d ever seen, they shined with hazel flecks that guaranteed he’d catch a few double takes from women in any crowd.
My mother is one of the most outwardly confused people I know. The “drama with mama” was endless, but most of the time we all put up with it because we knew the source—her past. See, my mother was born to one of Manhattan’s black female socialites in the 1950s. Only my grandmother wasn’t really black with a capital B, as in “Black and proud.” Grandma Lucy was mixed. As was her mother before her, her mother before her, and her mother before her—you get the picture. To make a long story short, this twisted past led to my mother (the child of Grandma Lucy’s marriage to a white man who didn’t know my grandmother’s race until he proposed marriage) having serious issues wherever race was concerned. In contrast to what one would think, she turned out nothing like Grandma Lucy. My mother hated the idea of passing and the privilege it seemed to provide her with as the sole heir of the son of a Texas railroad tycoon. The importance Grandma Lucy placed on color, brooding over my mother’s dusky tan skin whenever the sun was high and insisting that my mother was “lucky” to have inherited my grandfather’s straight nose, rose-strained cheeks, and straight blond hair, ate away at her. Sometimes I felt as if my mother was always standing in between the lines of her color—the light side and the dark side. She was too afraid or embarrassed to embrace her light skin for all that it meant to Grandma Lucy, so she kept her blond hair dyed black, frowned when someone praised her light hazel eyes, and always seemed to feel a need to shower people with dark skin, including my father, with compliments. She wanted people to know that she was Black (with a capital B), she was down for the people and not, as they say, still passing.