created what can only be described as baby camel toe. No one saw but me. I tried to get her to stop violently exposing the outline of her little vah jay jay, but she was insistent, outlining the tiny V shape with each pull. “Okay, that’s enough,” I said gently, bending down to lift her little hands out of the pockets of her one-piece.
“She has a v-wedgie!” shouted some six-year-old in eyeshot.
“Excuse you?”
“A V-WED-GIE”—exasperated now, she was shouting like how you do with someone who doesn’t speak the same language as you—“it’s when—”
“Umm…I know what a v-wedgie is, little girl.” I had no idea what a v-wedgie was, and neither should a first-grader. I shooed both of them—the v-wedgee and the v-wedger—into the next room for more fruit punch and innocence.
A few weeks later, we were having an alcohol-fueled debate on men—why we wanted ’em, where to find ’em, how to keep ’em. Adaoha, twenty-three, was a virgin then, or something close. It was my opinion that as soon as some dude got past her bra, all moral authority would go the way of the underwire. She ignored this and instead ticked off her list of requirements for happily-ever-after in old-school MASH style. Remember? Mansion, House, Apartment, Shack. Adaoha wanted a man with a degree, a six-figure salary, perfect teeth, a good family, a healthy 401K, and who would be ready to get married after a year of dating (and perhaps not doing it).
“What if you meet some gorgeous garbage collector or a street sweeper whose penis is like ten inches long?” I asked.
“Nope!”
“Boooooo. Just wait until some dude licks your titties. It’s gonna be Reynolds for you, honey—a wrap, done, finito.” At least that’s how it was for me. All my onward-Christian-soldier brainwashing in Awanas came out in the wash once Gary Johnson convinced me to just let him “put the head in.”
“I’m friggin’ serious,” Adaoha said. “I’m not going to settle for some ole bullshit.” She beat back our barrage of explanations (the ones we’d been telling ourselves): there weren’t that many college-educated black men on the market in the first place, and those who were on the auction block wanted white women or ghetto girls or men, not bourgie broads. A good black man wasn’t just clandestine, he was near Jurassic. We were twenty-three and jaded.
But Adaoha wasn’t—then. She’d skipped born-again trips to health services (“Please, God, if I’m okay this time then…”) and reality checks before dawn (“Soooo, you’re not staying over?”). I couldn’t let her get away with being the me before I got grown and a prescription for Ortho. I wanted her down in the dumps with the rest of us. Back in the black girls’ club.
“Well, then, you have fun with your dry v-wedgie!” I shot back.
There was a vacuum of silence and shocked looks right before the table burst into epiphany-strength laughter. DRY V-WEDGIES! This would be Adaoha’s new epithet and our new rallying cry. Whenever heartbreak conned one of us into hating men, all anyone had to do was mention the word dry together with v-wedgie. Most closely translating to the phrase “Open sesame,” “dry v-wedgie” unlocked visions of a nightmarish future where we spent each day racing through life with our heads down and our legs strong but all that chafing in between.
Maybe that’s what Adaoha was thinking about the night she left us. We had our last conversation the day before.
JamAmPrincess (12:30:33 p.m.): Uh, what’s with the piss face
nyCALIgrl4 (12:32:45 p.m.): no more Dex
JamAmPrincess (12:33:45 p.m.): what y?
JamAmPrincess (12:34:08 p.m.): y r u makin it sound so final
JamAmPrincess (12:36:26 p.m.): ppl get back together
nyCALIgrl4 (12:36:32 p.m.): nope
nyCALIgrl4 (12:36:36 p.m.): we break up too much
JamAmPrincess (12:37:02 p.m.): ur still not telln me what happened
nyCALIgrl4 (12:37:06 p.m.): he doesnt want a relationship
nyCALIgrl4 (12:37:17 p.m.): nothing “happened” per se
JamAmPrincess (12:38:02 p.m.): so no more friends either?
nyCALIgrl4 (12:38:23 p.m.): i’m so not into s&m
JamAmPrincess (12:38:34 p.m.): lmao!
JamAmPrincess (12:38:59 p.m.): i’m just sayn mayb he’s on a diff schedule
JamAmPrincess (12:44:42 p.m.): but u guys seemed so comfy together
nyCALIgrl4 (12:44:46 p.m.): we are
nyCALIgrl4 (12:47:28 p.m.): but he’s so schizo about it
nyCALIgrl4 (12:47:36 p.m.): one second he wants to introduce me to his parents
nyCALIgrl4 (12:47:46 p.m.): and the next he’s still hollering at this other chick
JamAmPrincess (1:02:49 p.m.): the one he was canoodling with in the club?
nyCALIgrl4 (1:07:05 p.m.): GIRL YES
She wasn’t online the next day. Had already logged off. In real life I couldn’t forgive her. Wouldn’t. Or myself for letting her sign out without