Dale C. Slavin’s “Joie de Vie,” a limestone sculpture on a granite base, looks like a single woman chilling with her children in Beachwood near The Land in Ohio.

My new doctor is Indian.  During a recent first visit, he asked if I had children.  When I told this graham-cracker colored man no, the look on his face revealed he rarely met Black women over twenty who were virgins to giving birth.  Then he went and asked me that other question, the question that comes first—I presume—if you are any other attractive single woman.  Why aren’t you married?

Non-Blacks just don’t get it.

As long as the majority of Black men remain penniless or without a job or career or some legal means to win bread and feel good (and manly) about themselves, Black men don’t marry.  Black men—no man—will ask you to marry him—under these circumstances.

He may live with you, eat your food, drive your car, spend your money, and wrestle with you nightly in your bed.  But, without owning anything of his own, he won’t plant anything on your waiting hand but kisses.  And why should he?  As clueless as men pretend to be, all men know that a marriage without funds fails.  And men don’t feel like feeling like failures.

Me neever.

Another reason I’m not married is because I always believed someday I would be.  I’m cute so I never reeked of the desperation that begins in a woman’s twenties and runs hot until the end of singledom like a fever.

Of the handful of Black men that I dated with a passion, three already had children.  When I was in my early twenties, men with children were a complete turnoff.  Call me selfish but I didn’t care to ponder baby muvvas; why it didn’t work out; how he didn’t want children but, hey, they’re here now.  Being with a man with children long term when I was younger felt dark, like settling.  Settling like dust without the zing of light on cheap furniture.  I couldn’t do it.

So I didn’t.

Of the other handful of Black men that I dated who did not have children, I felt that they, while intelligent, lacked ambition.  They were too comfortable living a no-collar lifestyle (even with degrees).  Most did not read books, newspapers, magazines.  Nothing!  Some did not have hobbies beyond smoking weed and basketball.  Others did not understand sarcasm.  They be like:

“So what you really sayin’ though?” 

They did not take trips.  They did not plan anything.  In a world of strawberry and orange marmalade, they . . . only . . . ate . . . GRAPE . . . jelly!  I was bored.

What I did not plan for as I matured was men getting shorter; angrier; sillier; less attractive; more liable to have a bald head, low self-esteem, and a felony; more liable to have five extra mouths to feed (in addition to the one) and an ex-wife on (booty) call.

Ninety-eight percent of the Black men I see I have no physical reaction to when I’m wading in their cologned presence.  (I tend to savor the cologne more than the man.)  The only time I feel passion for Black men is when someone denies their right to occupy space in the world other than in a jail cell.  For the Black man’s civil rights, I will always be the lead and loudest cheerleader with the biggest bullhorn.  Beyond that, for the ninety-eight percent, (waning hormones aside) I have no attraction.  I am as indifferent to them as a pair of chunky clogs.  I don’t feel anything for them, their bad-ass kids, or their angry baby muvvas.

Wait, I do feel something—but they don’t need it.  I feel a twinge of pity for any ordinary grape jelly eater who may never realize how full of flavor and wide the world is and how much more it has to offer than Schlitz Malt Liquor and a pack of smokes from the corner store.

Instead of settling for the common everyday ninety-eight percent, I have resolved to go gray (as this sculpture) waiting for members of the precious but elusive two percent.  He will be ruggedly handsome, looming over me like a mountain, with good teeth and a voice so smoove it melts the elastic in my granny drawers.

His skin will be Nick Cannon-brown (whether he’s Black, Indian, or has to spray it on from a can).  He will not speak in riddles or rhyme like Jesse Jackson and rappers.  He will be living his dream even if it’s a simple landscaping business consisting of a single and lonely lawn mower.  He will know the importance of voting.  He will know what it means to be loyal.  He will not live with his sweet as syrup mother (unless the Lord’s whispering in her ear “Come home” and she’s tons too sweet for some pissy nursing home like Willow Park).  He will live with character, integrity, respect and, if he’s a practicing Christian, perhaps one day with me.  Until then, I won’t be some fat black single baby muvva with chillun crawling all over the place and me.  Scribbling with crayons on my clean white walls.  As dreamy and yummy and good-smelling as babies can be, that is not my “joie de vie.”

Besides, I’m a writer and what a writer needs more than a man or real-life drama is space to fantasize in peace.  Unlike most creatures, I enjoy time alone, time by myself.  Silence is golden.  The problem with most humans is that, while they’re “fiending” for a significant other, they are not investing time being themselves, which means following their true life purpose, which—ultimately—may not involve the marriage relationship (or children) at all.

Some days I sigh, lamenting the possibility of not knowing what my own child’s voice calling me “Mama” will sound like.  On other days, when I think of wiping the nose above the mouth calling me Mama too many damn times in a long day when I’m tired from working to make somebody other than myself rich (or trying to figure out the right words for my metaphors), I realize I am beyond Chris Breezy Cool with not knowing that special joy my mama and yo’ mama knew.

As for those two or three scoops of Black men I once imagined husbanding, they were perfectly decent.  For a time.  Perfect just the way they are.  Just not perfect for me.

What about you?  Have you settled?  Are you still waiting?  Or have you clocked out?

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[Quote courtesy of Matt Bellassai and BuzzFeed.com]