Saying Goodbye...

....or, Crazy Hoes I have known, the saga continues.

During this period of flux that I am currently inhabiting, there have been a few voices from my past that I have entertained. You will all surely remember my previous blog about Lil J, the cute guy with the drinking problem, (whose number is now saved in my cellulary phone as DO NOT ANSWER) so let me hit you with a story about someone else whose number has joined that list, a biracial gal I'll call Mo Gumbo.

I first met Mo Gumbo on Grand Route St. John, during the early part of 2001, a period when I was spending a lot of time with my neighbor, the Lady Ella, a beautiful Creole lady who worked at Cafe du Monde in the French Quarter. I was dropping by Ella's patio on my way home after a trip to Terranova's grocery store, and had a loaf of Bunny Bread hanging out of my grocery bag. Ella introduced me to Mo Gumbo, a heavy-set bright skinned lady with long dreadlocks & abnormally huge breasts whose instant reaction was to say something along the lines of "It's nice to meet you, you seem too smart to be eating bad bread like that."

"Grrl I don't know who you think you are to be critiquing a hoe's bread, but until you are paying for it, I would suggest you step off!"

We had a good laugh about this, I suppose, and we became friends. I remember the next time I saw her, she showed up to where I was living with my ginger tranny roommate, Summer Teef, all upset. Her boyfriend was breaking up with her & she just really needed to smoke some weed. She was so upset that he just KNEW how bad she needed to smoke, and he was smoking all up in her face. I was still not understanding why she was showing up to my house when I didn't have any weed, but eventually she told Tranzilla & me that she wanted us to come over and help her pack her ex's stuff. Please remember this is at a time when I didn't have cable, and this little drama had a lot of appeal.

We went over to her place, and helped her put some stuff in bags, and she kept asking if we wanted stuff of his, like shoes or fishing tackle or I don't even know what. I know neither of us wanted any of this foolish man's stuff. Or maybe he wasn't such a fool, as he wasn't dealing with her mania. Anyway, so at one point, she's so irate about the way the break up went that this crazy lady takes this man's tackle box, hikes up her hippy chick skirt & pees in it!!

I have to admit, this was HILARIOUS. Wacky, yes, but the intrinsic comedy of it all was pretty undeniable.

As time went on, we got closer, I think. There was even a point when she told Tranzilla & I that we were like her brothers--or sisters, she just couldn't decide. Later on I was to discover that she has a tendency to call the people in her life she's not having sex with by some familial name--brother, father, sister--until she does end up having some kind of sexual contact with them. But I'll get back to that later. There was something I liked about her. Not just that she was well-educated & very well spoken (she had grown up in Washington State, and so her accent alone made her exotic) but she was also quite good at actualizing. Like she just set goals and achieved them, unlike myself (and most of my coterie of friends) who was really good at thinking up cool ideas but not knowing how to go about making them happen. She was a survivor--she had been thru a bout with cancer and had lost her mother to the Big C & her father to AIDS. She had bonded closely with my neighbor Ella, who had lost one of her breasts because of Cancer. Despite all of this, she had a book deal. She had diplomas from universities. She attained jobs with ease.

But in her personal life---WHOA. Big troubles. Insecurity and narcissism led to bad decisions with men. She was the kind of gal to pick up dudes in bars & then wonder why they didn't call back. Yes. One of those kinds of gals. So she was seeing this white guy & turned up pregnant & the guy's family flipped out in some racist rage. Of course, when the baby came out blond & blue-eyed, the family was ok with the baby but she couldn't let go of her rage against them. But anyway she was an on-the-road kinda gal. She bounced from New Orleans to Washington State & back a few times and eventually lands up in Houston, dating a "great guy--and he's black!!" however, this relationship didn't work out because Mr Black Man was in the armed forces and had a pretty severe case of PTSD that manifested in alcoholism due to several tours of duty in Iraq & Afghanistan. oh & he was married with four kids anyway. Did I mention that she had a son by this man?

During this time, she was steadily losing weight; she got her breasts reduced & became a marathon runner. Our friendship is carried out mostly over the internet or phone:
"I'm not sure if I should keep this baby or have it adopted"
"I'm going to have it adopted"
"I changed my mind."
These little postcards from the edge are continuously entertaining. But I also have to remember that these calls for advice were also usually punctuated with offers to fly me to Seattle or Houston or wherever she was at that week to see her that never came to pass. There were promises of birthday presents, graduation presents, that were also not kept. There was some gift exchange though, over the years--I remember a hello kitty compact and some cookies from her & I sent some scarves, hats & headbands. I liked this girl. I thought she did crazy things but I really liked her & looked forward to hearing from her, even though the calls were often troubling, I did my best to always tell her the objective truth about things, and she always said that's what she valued most about our friendship.

So what, you may be asking, could have made me decide to be done with this woman?

Last summer, with the white man keeping her daughter, and the black man out of the picture (re-deployed maybe? I know there was some drama with his wife but it's all behind her now), she decides that she's going to spend the summer taking a road trip with her son, taking photographs & blogging throughout about the people she meets. I read the blog avidly, seeing photographs of poor people everywhere she goes. Like, did you intentionally seek out shelters? But anyway the blog stalls out in Missoula, Montana.

I get a phone call : "Do you think I should take over running this bar for a woman with cancer?"
"No grrl. One more or less bar in Missoula is not as important as following through with your plan."
"But I met a guy here & I really like him too!"
Here we go again. The guy is named Sam (how Freudian!!) but he is about to go study in Guatemala. She snags some job in record-keeping for the local city hall and enrolls in school there and gets her kids into the local day care. Sam takes off on her but there's a handy man who comes in really handy when she has a health scare and has to have a procedure that requires 4 or 5 days of recovery time. Without ever dating, she starts playing house with the handy man, who is in the middle of losing his job for a dirty drug test, but his cover story is that he just wants a break from the rat race. But she lets this man (and his teenage daughter) stay with her until one night once too often, he has some freak out & breaks her car windshield, again. He threw her on the bed & called her the N-word in front of her son. So she has had it with him.

But guess who is pregnant again??? And guess who gets a call?:
"Sam I need your help"
"Ok, what can I do from New Orleans?"
"Well, I need you to call this guy up, since I can't contact him without my lawyer because of the restraining order, and tell him I'm going to have an abortion, and I will leave his stuff at the lawyer's office."
"WHAT?"
"I need closure."
"But didn't you say earlier that you have an appointment to meet with the lawyer tomorrow at 4PM?"
"Well, yeah, but I can't wait that long"
"Why don't you just GO to the lawyer's office at 3 & drop his stuff off & tell your lawyer to tell him all of this madness??"
"Because I need this now!"
"Grrl. Look. You have been dealing with this man since, what, August? I think you can wait another 14 hours for closu---"
CLICK.

Yes. This chick hung up on me mid-sentence.

I reflected for a minute. Should I call back? Was the drama worth it? I think if any other ho hung up in my face like that, I'd be blowing their phone up in a hot second. But this? Not worth it. I just didn't feel like it any more.

Yesterday I got a text from an unsaved number that simply said: "This is my new number. Mo Gumbo"

I was flabbergasted, to tell the truth. After consulting with my baby Sis, Diana about how to proceed, I sent this text:
"Until you are ready to apologize to me for not taking part in your latest exercise in co-dependence, I don't think we need to be communicating"

I shared this with my so-called wife & she was like, "Well bitch, maybe it is time to say goodbye to this ho & goodbye to being the person you were when you knew her"

& I've never heard a truer word spoken.

So that's why Mo Gumbo's number is now also saved as "Do Not Answer"

It's not just goodbye Mo Gumbo. It's goodbye to taking on problems that are not mine. Goodbye to unnecessary drama and foolishness. Goodbye perpetuating a  pattern of behavior that may have once worked but is by now just flat out tired, not to mention exhausting.

I feel like cleansing myself of this stuff is a good way to make room for the blessings that are to come.

Praise be.