“OK, but y'all are confusing me and this is why I'm staying a bachelor because y'all have already convinced too many of our sisters that this makes sense: why do I need some woman to be my fantasy when I like living in my reality and I would want a wife to live in it with me?”
“But that's the issue,” 18-year-old Vanna Trent told her big brother 21-year-old Melvin as they listened to him being royally cussed out from the other end of the phone.. “We come from Black people who still remember how to build and even rebuild a reality they want to live in.”
“The problem is bigger than that, though,” Melvin said. “Our presidential choices, for example, are both looking backwards for the future. A lot of people don't know how to get to the reality they want, and everybody seems to think it's either someone else's fault or someone else's job to get them there.”
“Yeah, no,” Vanna said.
“The other thing is,” Melvin said,”I'm growing up with you and Velma and Gracie, and our mother is Melissa Trent and our grandmothers are Big Mama Velma Stepforth and Grandma Jubilee. I don't even know how my peers think they are going to survive, trying to take women like y'all and expecting you to be their fantasy.”
“Their nightmare, maybe,” Vanna said.
“Yeah … can you imagine Grandma Jubilee at even like 20, laughing her head off at that situation and then blowing the guy away if he got mad and threatened her?” Melvin said.
“It is a good thing our grandfather came along when he did, and that times were different,” Vanna said, “although frankly, Melvin, we don't even know if something like that did happen, and we definitely can't put it past Grandma Jubilee.”
“And then our other grandmother was out here walking out on a whole billionaire and waiting for him a decade to humble himself and make it so she could come back,” Melvin said. “Yeah, so I'm supposed to go out there and take my chances telling some woman, 'be my fantasy' when I already know this is not how it works with real grown women.”
“It could be worse, Melvin,” Vanna said. “You could get the 20-year-old version of Gracie, but not as sweet, meaning she would systematically let you know that that's not how any of this works.”
“Yeah, no,” Melvin said. “I'm just not doing any of this right now. I have too much respect for women to play games, and I know I'm not ready for a family yet, so, no.”
“Are you going to hang up on and block your former friend still telling you what he has really been thinking over the last ten years?” Vanna said.
“I'm not hanging up because I bet he still has one of those minutes' plans, and I'm letting him blow them for the month for bothering me and then I'll block him,” Melvin said. “Any second now – yep, he just lost the call. That's what happens when you don't live in reality. Reality just comes and gets you.”
