Page 20 of Call and Response

It was personal, and affirming, and those things were great, but in the time we were in, we needed something that would go viral, get stuck in people’s heads and really justsaturate.

That was how you got people excited about what was coming next.

“How did your last relationship end?” I asked, pulling Noble’s attention. He had an extremely rough cut of the song playing in his headphones, recorded on his phone. The sound quality was absolute trash, but it was enough to catch the vibe, and I could practically feel the happiness radiating off him, even though he was playing it cool.

This was easily his tenth listen with a notebook in front of him, and he was tweaking lyrics and arrangements as he went along.

My question made his eyebrows shoot up.

“Huh?” he answered, pulling one side of his headphones off so he could hear better. “What did you say?”

“I asked how your last relationship ended,” I told him. “Wondering if it’s something else we can pull from. It needs to be more relatable, and damn near everybody can relate to relationship bullshit.”

“Yeah, but…”

The discomfort on his face made me lean in closer from my place beside him on the couch,reallycurious now. “But what? You must’ve really fucked it up if you don’t even want to say.”

“Yes and no,” he admitted, fully removing the headphones now. “Honestly… it’s so damn stereotypical it’s embarrassing.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Stereotypical? So… you’re a cheater then.”

“Not technically.”

“Boy.”

“We weren’t official!”

“OhGod, you really weren’t lying in the music, were you?” I laughed, shaking my head. “That’s why that shit hit so hard, because you really are toxic, wow.”

“Damn, it’s like that?!”

“It sure is,” I countered. “But it makes sense—looking like you do, sounding like you do—everybody kinda expects you to be a fuckboy, so…”

“Which isfuckedup,” he said. “Like, think about that shit—everybody expects you to be a fuckboy.That creates a certain pressure, damn near astandardto live up to, and if you don’t, everybody looks at you like there’s something wrong with you. And if youarefaithful, well…no you’re not. You couldn’t be. Why would you be? You’re not actually capable of that.”

“Well shit,” I mused. “I… I’ve never really thought about that. Butstill,are you saying you were trash because you were expected to be?”

“I’m saying I wasn’t, but everybody—including her—thought I was anyway. So what was the purpose?” he responded with a shrug.

“I get that, but can you blame her for having doubts, considering the way dating culture has been for the last five or ten years? Especially with social media and everything. It wreaks havoc on your confidence in literally every facet of your life if you’re not careful. Dealing with someone like you, of course she had insecurities.”

“Which I tried to be understanding of,” he argued. “Like, she was fine as fuck too, and I knew folks were trying to get at her. But I trusted her. I could never get that same trust back though. And even when I would try to reassure her, sending gifts, always commenting on her pics, not being overly friendly with other women, all the shit you’re supposed to do, I would get accused of doing those things as cover. Can you imagine? I’m in her comments saying ‘bring your fine ass to me’ and somehow it gets spun into,you’re just saying that so nobody is suspicious.It got to a point where I gave up and just started doing the shit if I was going to be accused of it anyway.”

I sighed. “Yeah… that’s messed up,” I agreed. “I get both sides though. There’s so much lying and faking and betrayal it’s hard to know what’s real anymore.”

He nodded his agreement, then met my gaze. “So, is this what you had in mind?” he asked, leaning back into the couch with his arms draped across the cushions. “Listening to me whine like a bitch about nobody thinking I should be taken seriously in a relationship?”

“I wouldn't frame it that way exactly,” I replied with a chuckle. “But yes. Your vulnerability around your desire for real romantic connection being limited by these kinds of… misogynistic cultural touch points is refreshing. And I actuallythink you should put it over a beat. It’ll only work if there's also acknowledgment of why those stereotypes are what they are, and why it's so hard to take a lot of your brethren at face value with the things that they say,” I added, reaching across to give him a playful shove.

“I can swallow that,” Noble agreed. “But y’all—”

“I already know—maybe we don't have to hold another man's mistakes against someone who's trying to pursue us,” I said. “There's a balance we can find, while absolutely paying attention to the red flags so you motherfuckers don’t play in our face.”

“Of course,” he conceded. “But can a green flag just be that? And not evidence of something else?”

“Sometimes itisevidence of something else though.”

“See?” He chuckled. “Y’all are hell!”

---