Thursday, June 24, 2010

Definition of The Metrosexual Male

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I have a fashionable, Baptist friend that finds sanctification in all things Christian...

Louboutin, Lacroix, and Dior...that is!

This fashionable friend is an anomaly in DC, because he can debate the relevance of politics and prose and the irrelevance of polkadots and ponchos. This friend is the epitome of an Upper East Side Manhattan, VISA Black Card-carrying, curly-haired, perfect-skin having, bleached-white teeth buppie. This friend is (and still could be) the ideal candidate for AKA Sorority EXCEPT he's a dude and he believes their official colors -  salmon pink and apple green - are so 2001!

Mr. Swagg (because he's the definition of...) would rather wear a fake polo from Wal-Mart than step his Marc Jacobs Oxford in the basement of ANY bargain store EVER. So how he became friends with a 23+  lover of Forever 21 - a woman's store packed with 98% nylon, $5 dresses, 16-year old allowance spenders and young professionals on a budget (raises hand) is beyond me....

Mr. Swagg is the gay BFF I've been looking for all my life, except he exclusively loves women (eliminating the gay part), and gives me a mad case of paranoia whenever I shoe shop for pumps at Payless (eliminating the BFF part).

He is someone I have tried to define for going on 324 days (<--respect the diligence), and all I've come up with is Mr. Swagg (the definition of...a Metrosexual Male).  In other words, he is totally in touch with his masculinity but not afraid to embrace the finer things in life (mani's, pedi's, pu@%!*).  He's flyy, smells fresh, stays clean, loves women and is able to converse about more than just basketball and beer (<---though he can do that too)

MOST IMPORTANTLY, Metrosexual Mr. Swagg understands CODE PINK girl talk and can provide the ever, elusive, desperately sought after: GUY OPINION.  Which was what I was looking for as I continued my quest to find out if  my girlfriend's, boyfriend Mark (say that 2x fast) could still be a straight man despite having an inclination to munch carpet while calling his best friend boo with a winkface ;-)

"What's the deal Bree-dizzle?"

Swagg and I were sitting at a trendy restaurant on 7th Street called Oya where the chopsticks are sexy and the food is served in cute little miniature dishes that Forever 21+ me wanted to sneak in my purse (hey, it's a recession)!

"Dude, I think my girlfriend's, boyfriend Mark might be gay but I don't know."

Swagg glared at me from across the table.  At first I thought he was about to chastise me for wearing a dress from Target outside of the 'burbs, but then I realized....

"Rolled-Up Jeans Guy?" he asked.

he and I had already discussed boyfriend Mark a few weeks back in my attempt to bond with him over a fashion faux paus that wasn't mine (thankya Lawd!).

The gchat went something like this:

ME: "So Charm's boyfriend Mark had Double-Cuffed jeans on the other day."
SWAGG: "LOL...tell me he's from Europe?"
ME: "He's NOT from Europe."
SWAGG: "Whack"
ME: "But he..."
SWAGG: "Whack"
ME: "They've been together for like...."
SWAGG: "Dude is whack or he's gay."
ME: "He's so not whack, though."

Then Swagg hit me with a Wendy Williams "How you doin'" and the conversation ended with Swagg emailing me an article about the all the reasons why rolled-up jeans were wrong (and whack and possibly gay...unless of course the dude wearing them was European - but dude in question was not though).

"It's deeper than a pants roll!" I said sliding one sexy chopstick in my Pucci bag and giving him the low down of the pictures boyfriend Mark carried of Midnight Rob in his wallet, the miss you messages between the two and the winkface.

Swagg looked underwhelmed. 

"So, what do you think?" I asked.

"Breez-tizzle, you may be clueless in fashion" (OUCH!) "But it doesn't take a genius to figure this one out. It's like a girl buying a Pucci bag - looks like one - but all you have to do is pay attention to realize it's a knockoff. A P looks nothing like a G, Bree-tonia!"

My Pucci bag suddenly felt disrespected!
 
Swagg (because he's the defintion of...) knew all about the bait and switch.  Being a curly-haired, pretty-boy metrosexual male that could never be found without a fresh shape-up, Swagg always got approached by men that thought he played for the Homo team!  And though his open mind was never offended, he was always clear where his hetero interest lay - with a green-eyed lady nicknamed Mulan, who had an eclectic personality that matched her sense of style.  Besides, she was the only other person he knew that lit an Archipelago candle (google it!) when Alexander McQueen took his life!

She was what he really wanted to discuss over cute little china and sushi at Oya.

So while I discreetly tucked the other sexy chopstick in my Pucci bag, and thought how I would tell Charm that boyfriend, carpet-munching Mark did not fit the definition of (a....Metrosexual), I wondered how often do women find themselves in a situation when a man's actions leave her wondering if she was dating a knock-off instead of the real thing?

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Come back next week and read about a How a Metrosxual Man Date's in DC....
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Monday, June 21, 2010

The Tail End of a Boo

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"I think she should just wait until he's sleeping and stick her finger in his..."

It was the tail end of Spring and one of those muggy DC afternoons where the air smelled of sweaty metro mixed with overheated tourist.  Flower Child and I were on our way to meet Southern Charm, who had called a CODE PINK (a.k.a.  emergency girls-only powow) to discuss the meaning of a "boo" and a "winkface."

Allow me to explain!


Two days prior, pre-boo, pre-winkface, and pre-CODE PINK,  Charm had broken into her boyfriend's gmail account desperate to find out if  it was alright to show a bit more of her bad girl side OR keep her Southern girl act going just a little bit longer.  After a few keyword searches -  "date," "kiss," "girlfriend"  - had confirmed she was the only lady in his life, she sighed satisfied and ready to show her Sasha Fierce. Then a window popped up...

"Hey Boo ;-)"

From Rob.

At Midnight.

....

It seemed that, although Charm was definitely the only lady, she may not have been the only love!

A "wtf, gtfoh, omg" three-way call ensued soon after, with us three fiercely debating the interpretation of "boo" and a winkface.  Maybe Rob was trying to frighten him electronically, and the winkface was an attempt to assuage his fears.  Perhaps Rob was short for Roberta (which wouldn't be any better - BTW)

Maybe it was all a mistake...

Either way none of us could agree, hence the impromptu meeting at La Tasca,  a Spanish restaurant that afforded us the chance to play the "what's that" game with our waiter Papi and had just enough sangria to assist us in pondering over the meaning of a semicolon paired with a parenthesis.

"I think you should stick your finger in his..."

But Charm was paying no attention to Flowerchild, instead she was slamming dozens of copied and pasted gchat conversations on the table like Johnny Cochran in Chanel.

Scandalous snippets jumped out of a sea of vowels and consonants, secret conversations between boyfriend Mark and Midnight Rob:


"Remember when I had you face down on the carpet."
"I'm not just a hit it or quit it type of dude."
"Can't wait to get down with you later. Miss you, my man!"

To Mark's credit.  He hadn't actually said he had sexual relations with that man. Then again, neither had Bill Clinton during the Lewinsky trial.

Maybe this had been ALL been a coincidence! Maybe they were both just two, straight men extremely comfortable with calling each other boo?

But then Charm started recalling how Mark enjoyed sporadic weekend excursions to see a male friend (gmail revealed twas Rob), the one picture he carried in his wallet (twas Rob, too), and the way he wore his jeans rolled up 4 inches above the ankle despite being 110 miles from the nearest beach (twas Rob's fashion tip as well).


Were these examples Ru-Paul suspect.

Maybe! 

But so was Fonsworth Bentley's neon-colored bow-tie and umbrella (in 90 degree weather, not a cloud in the sky!)

This did not make him gay, though...

So it brought us back to evaluating his words (the truth he told when noone was looking)....AND the words that none of us girls could really understand because like the La Tasca menu in espanol, they were all coded up in secret-boy language and all we knew was CODE PINK girl talk.

Deciding if another person was gay wasn't as easy as asking "what's that" to Papi or deciphering vague references to carpet munching and rolled-up pants.

Maybe you couldn't really call a man guy unless he self-identified himself as such first. 

Flowerchild had an idea, "Try sticking your finger in his..."

But Charm and I barely heard her on the way out the door.  Suddenly the idea of eating a Legal Sea Food where we knew exactly what was on the menu of options seemed a bit more appetizing.

Later that night Charm texted me and said:

"He finally told me the deal :-?"

Now it was my turn to decipher exactly what that emoticon meant. 


...........

Stay tuned later this week for "boyfriend Mark's"response
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Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Facebook Pimping & Sexy Status Updates

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I first employed the skill of "deception" the moment I grew tired of running down my 5th grade crush, jumping on his back, and getting mushed in my face as I attempted to give him a kiss.

I couldn't understand why my little boy crush was more amused with kicking rocks than kissing me! 

So, I abandoned back jumping in favor of a new approach.  If the boy was afraid of cooties, I would tell him that the answer to a cootie-free life was printed on the inside of my bottom lip. Eager to be cootie-less, the boy-in-question, would dive in to take a look and....VOILA...my first kiss would occur!

And, it did - in fact - happen that way.  He leaned in to take a look and I took my first kiss, and though the boy walked away with more cooties than he had before, I - all kissed up and happy - learned that persuasion yielded more results than force. 

Deception, I thought - or "the art of making false information seem real" - was the answer to never being mushed in my dainty, little, 5th grade face again.

I have since put the playground games to rest, opting instead to tackle another virtual realm of opportunity.  Enter: Facebook Status Update!  The method whereby women are able to convince unsuspecting boys (over 21) that they do things they actually do NOT...such as:  wash their cars and shave their armpits every other day.

My girls and I called it Facebook Pimping, the new playground ploy to get a kiss. 

For example, a woman didn't have to know the difference between a field goal and a three-point shot, as long as she updated her status every time "the game was on" (discreetly copying updates from her little brother's status).

SCORE!

Likewise, if she talked about boiling collards and frying chicken (even while she ordered Kung Fu chicken for delivery)...she could obtain instant comments and dating options in a matter of nanoseconds!  

Facebook Pimping - we dubbed it - the new, online equivalent of getting a man's attention WITHOUT hooker heels and a get 'em girl dress but via 180 characters in a small, white window.

On this particular day, I was bursting a few brain cells trying to figure out how I would pimp my Facebook status.... My current status had generated a measly 2 "likes" and 1 comment:

Bree is just getting home from work.
To which...
Flowerchild commented: But it's Friday, you're lame....

I was momentarily ashamed that my Friday's were never as interesting or acrobatic as Flowerchild's...

I scrolled through a few status updates and found Longwalk's....

Longwalk is home listening to old school Justin Timberlake and OD'ing on a few bag of skittles.
He was probably scratching his balls, texting and watching Family Gay.
I left a comment, anyway....Save me a skittle :-)

Next was...

Big Chocolate...ya'll boys just left with a car full of boys, but me I left the party with a dime. you know how Big Chocolate get's down...

Starfish69 Jones Commented: thanks for gettin' it right last night, boo

Big Chocolate Replied: anytime "mama."

I guess Big Chocolate had found a place to shove his "pretty, shitty key" after all.

It seemed like everyone had a facebook gimmick but me...so I tried a few...

Bree is looking for a good reception to attend.
No Likes, No Comments

Bree is dowloading Janet Jackson's "I Get Lonely"
No Likes, No Comments

Bree wants at least 1 of her 400 friends to comment on her status
To Which...
Flowerchild Commented: WTF, Bree. It's Friday! Get out of the house!

Bree at this point was wondering if Flowerchild was having so much fun, why the heck was she all up on (yes allupon <-- one word) my Facebook page...I posted again....

Bree is putting on the mini dress and stiletto heels. 
(Then I changed my profile pic to me wearing a dress from BeBe that was 14 inches above my knee and had a neckline that was on a serious quest to meet my bellybutton)
22 Likes, 17 Comments (and counting)

I felt momentarily triumphant, as my tata's stared back at me from my Facebook picture.  Then I had a "WTF am I doing?" moment and realized I had officially become the newest DC Madame and pimped myself.  I quickly took down the picture and deleted the update. 

If I had to get a man by utilizing the art of deception, than what type of "pimps up, ho's down" game would I have to employ to keep him?

I went for a safer status update instead....

Bree is learning to be 100% myself.   I am me.  Take it or leave it.

I got 1 like and 1 comment, surprisingly from the guy in the 5th grade who had me eating concrete until I convinced him to look inside my bottom lip.  But now, one degree and 15 years later, he was smarter than the little boy of yesterday.  He had moved past kicking rocks to reading books like the one he had listed: Think and Grow Rich!

I sent him a message....

hey you, it's the former cootie queen! i just finished reading Think & Grow Rich!! hit me back if you're interested in chatting about it.

If Facebook Pimping could be defined as attracting attention in 180 characters or less.  I had successfully accomplished this goal MINUS the hook 'em girl heels and get 'em girl dress and still managed to keep it all the way 100% me!

...........

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Friday, June 4, 2010

Beyonce v. Sasha Fierce....Meeting a Man's Representative!

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Hi!  My name is Breeanne (that's one word).
I am 20 (something)
I am from Chicago (the Southside)
I am a journalist (for a really boring periodical...so...)
I like reading on my free time (really girly, ridiculously romantic, novels) ...AND...
I like cupcakes (from Georgetown Cupcakes MINUS the long line).

These are all the details that I share on my Facebook, Twitter and used to share on my Myspace page when folks still logged on religiously 25 years ago.  I also share these details with random men that ask me "what yo name is," with potential contacts at networking events, and during the 7 minute wait for the metro train.


These details are my Beyonce, before I introduce a man to my Sasha Fierce!  They represent a small snapshot of me, a small innocent pile of meaningless facts that allow a person get to know my representative!  And, trust me, everyone in the District of Columbia (and any major city or small town) has a representative!

On this day while having ice cream with Big Chocolate (my blind date from two weeks ago), I was slowly revealing a few unknowns about myself like: where I got my new pair of shoes for 75% off, my six week fast from red meat, and how I preferred granny panties over boy shorts! The latter was totally inappropriate (I know!) but hey...in the interest of revealing the unknown....

Satisfied with my reveal, I mentally brushed off my shoulder, popped my proverbial collar...and dared Big Chocolate to show me the man behind his representative.

Well, "mama" he said....

I am 29. (good!)
I am from Atlanta (getting better, I love a Southern boy!)
I am in school working on my Bachelors (awesome!)
I am gainfully employed!  (YES!  YES! YES!  Where's Oprah's couch when you need to jump on it!) 
And...I'm getting started in my rap career.  I got a hot new track coming out this summer. 

I hesitated....

For one second....

An aspiring rapper?....at 29?....

Now, I am not one of those chicks that hates rap!  In fact, I love rap.  On any given day, you could find me bumping Kanye's "Diamond Are Forever" or Lil' Wayne's "Mrs. Officer," on my ipod Nano and on super high volume.   If it was a good day, you might even catch me stop and do a little booty pump in time with the beat.

But...ummm...dating a rapper...I wasn't sure.  I mean, didn't Lil' Wayne just get three women pregnant at the same time, and didn't Jay-Z secretly (keyword: secretly) date Beyonce for like 12 years...I am no man's (I repeat...NO MAN'S) baby mama or badly kept secret...

Maybe I could do this date-a-young-geezy thing, though.  After all, there was Pharell (the cutest, classiest nerd ever), and Common who wrote that love song/rap for Erykah Badu!

So...I inquired....

"Tell me about this new single."

"Mama!  This joint is going to be hot in streets." He pronounced streets with a "z." Then he promptly pulled out his I-phone and googled YouTube...

I was hopeful...

"BAM!  There you go!" He said slamming his "youtube" video in front of me.

A track started playing.  The beat was hardcore, had a little base, and the drums were making my foot tap  just a little bit....

Then...I heard the lyrics....

"Shawty got a big, juicy booty...got a big, round booty....got a big, juicy booty....got booty booty booty for days!"

Ummm.....

"Shawty got a big, juicy booty...got a big, round booty....got a big, juicy booty....got booty booty booty for days!"

I tried to look impressed.  I mean I really tried.

But then he got up from his chair and started rapping an impromptu verse...something about booty shapes and butt cracks....and then after two (excruciatingly) long minutes, and nineteen (ridiculously) long seconds...the track ended!


THANK GAWD...there was a Jesus...somewhere....

"The name of the track is "Juicy Booty," mama."  Big Chocolate said. "I figure if I could get the strip joints to  bump this then play it at a few college parties, the radio stations may pick it up,"

I wasn't convinced.  Not because he didn't sound incredible sexy while rapping, because he did...but I guess I just wasn't into the whole booty rap thing.  In all fairness, this was probably because I didn't have J-Lo's ass, but if I had to keep it all the way 100....it had more to do with my one visit to see a stripper that had resulted in the dancer farting in my lap (true story!)...I mean, how could I support a future boyfriend if I had been scarred for life by a stripper's wayward flatulence.

YES...Big Chocolate and I moved past answering the top TWO most annoying questions in DC...."where are you from"....AND..."what do you do"...

BUT....

I was NOT a fan of booty songs...but who knows...he might NOT have been a fan of 20 (somethings) in granny panties....

He and I had to decide if we liked the person behind our representatives...


Either way, I knew I could add another detail to my "getting to know me" list:

Hi!  My name is Breeanne (that's one word).
I am 20 (something)
I am from Chicago (the Southside)
I am a journalist (for a really boring periodical...so...)
I like reading on my free time (really girly, ridiculously romantic, novels)
I like cupcakes (from Georgetown Cupcakes MINUS the line)....AND...
I am not a fan of booty songs (...and no, I can't turnaround so you can see why)

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