Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in one of my favorite musicals and doomed romances, "Carmen Jones."
Back when I was still living it up in Bakersfield, Calif. I was working on a series of short fiction stories under the title "Doomed Romance." Partly out of humor and partly out of my own romantic graveyard I began collecting the stories of love gone bad.
I'm a romantic malaise mess. My love life is littered with the remains of unresolved issues, drama, disappointment and wayward, misfired seduction. I'm a chronically failed fool for love. Half my fault. Half the fault of those I've dated and like a lot of folks, male and female, sometimes I wanted to give up and for seven years I did.
After a nightmarish starter marriage that left me bruised and emotionally scarred I realized that I need to accept responsibility in some of the poor choices I'd made. So in an effort to educate, entertain and hopefully inspire, my next reader contributed series will be about relationships gone terribly, terribly wrong. Along the way I'll talk about the nine months of pain that lead to my seven years of solitude. Be prepared to know to get personal, because I plan to blare my troubles out as a beacon to warn men and women away from the pratfalls and misfortunes of toxic love. I can't protect you. But the least I can do is reveal the signs, the evidence that a naive heart, not assured in its visions can easily become prey for those who have a plan, a very, very bad plan to save what you thought was your wayward soul.
With each story we will discuss a different issue from incidents that made us chose celibacy over intimacy, considering no longer dating within your own culture or ethnicity (or stopping altogether), caused us to learn something about yourself or the souls of others, made us mad, mad us sad, we'll talk about what we're still hung up on, what you can't let go of, what we've forgiven and how we came to do so, and what we could never forgive.
If you'd like to contribute to my series, just send me your story in 500 words or less. (If you go over some, no worries. I'm flexible.) I want people to be honest, MALE and FEMALE, about these beautiful disasters, these love wars lost. Again, I won't use any names like I did with my mothers and daughters series last month.
I'd also really like to get into the complexities that come with black-on-black love. I want to hear from those who found a way to make love work for them (re: success stories!) and I want to hear from those still struggling (even within that success story). We want to generate ideas and get some catharsis by airing our heartbreaks, joys and grievances.
And I'll be right there with you because if anyone can write about dysfunctional love it's me. From my periods as a trophy girlfriend to a closeted homosexual to loving a narcissistic sociopath to engaging in self-destructive behavior with the poor rubes of Bakersfield until I benched myself from the love game, I got it bad.
I'll be telling my own stories while incorporating yours. So if you're interested I'll be soliciting stories over the next two weeks. Let's get away from the fluff and get down to the real and see what bitter hearts can reveal, can learn and where they can grow from love gone wrong.
**To contribute, write your 500 words or less story to The Snob at blacksnob@gmail.com.
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