when I was a kid the first girl I asked to be my girlfriend was a stoner chick with feathered hair and see through flannels worn down from use and reeking of perfume and resin.

she said she liked me but if she said yes she’d get her “ass kicked” and by that she meant that her dad didn’t want her dating a black guy, which didn’t bother me so much because in Illinois at the time that wasn’t all that unusual.

back then there were no black news anchors, no black quarterbacks, no black presidential candidates, and very few black kids in the suburbs, so I don’t blame her dad. too much. whats funny is I watched the dudes that she dated through junior high and high school and they were a long parade of losers dropouts and metal heads, some of whom were my friends and indeed losers. but the funny thing about racism, even mild racism is a dad might be more comfortable with a white loser who his daughter would break up with than a black guy who she would fall in love with.

at that point I decided that I would only date cheerleaders. If youre going to get said no to, I figured, it might as well be from someone out of your “league”. Crazy thing was, not many people were confident enough to date a lot of the cheerleaders in my school. I wasn’t confident either but I went for it, and a few said yes.

one girl’s dad was obviously not very happy about the situation and when I came to pick her up to take her to the movies he made sure to show me his rifles and animal heads hanging in his den. I didn’t see any brothas up there but I got the hint. And I never asked her out again. one day in homeroom she said, why haven’t we gone out again and I was all, I have a girlfriend in California who would get mad if I dated any cheerleaders.

when I moved to california being Black was a great thing. some girls went out of their way to date me because i wasnt the blonde surfer that they had grown tired of. fine with me. only problem was i was a virgin and i wanted to wait until i was totally in love before i wanted to have sex. they didnt care. they just wanted to see if the myth was true.

most of them didnt have much to compare anything to so they were all wow and i was all theres nothing there to be all wow about but they didnt know. nor did they care and i spent much of my junior college days doing everything-but with punk rock girls wanna-be mods and beach girls and the back seat of my cadillac, as messy as it was, got a lot of action.

so yes i experienced racism as a youngster, but the tables turned nicely after not too long and even though when i was younger and had to deal with the tangles of my thick afro and longed to be a surfer kid with blonde locks, it didnt take me long to see that who i was had its definate advantages.

too bad i had to move halfway across the country but whatever. like the man said everythings about location location location.

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