nAUGHTy Girl Chronicles. Vol 3.
Diary entries of a Black girl navigating love, lust, and the aughts in D.C.
June 2006
[Music coming from the speakers as she journals about how Google saved her life]
Dear Diary,
I met this nice white boy on the Metro who seemed interesting enough. We both rolled our eyes at the same time, frustrated by the wait for the next train…more than twenty minutes! A match formed over public transit woes in DC. After chatting a bit, we learned we lived in the same neighborhood. He asked if I’d be down to catch a cab together instead. Hell yeah! A man who takes initiative and can have an engaging conversation. Let’s go! After the cabbie drove us through three different cab zones, he paid the fare and asked for my number. I obliged. He was cute, could put sentences together, and lived in my hood. Why not?! He called me the next day to ask me out on a date, and I replied, “Sure.” I may have been a little too anxious about it, as I was excited about the chance to go out on a “real” date.
He took me out to Maggiano’s, an Italian restaurant not too far from the Friendship Heights Metro. Our conversation again was very engaging. He had good table manners and was dressed nicely, so the date was going well. But then, the check came. Now, this is an interesting part of any date as the woman either expects that the man who asked her out will pay for it or she hesitates in saying “We can split it, if you like.” Well, my date reached into his pocket and pulled out, not a wallet, but a WAD OF CASH! It had to be at least $1,000—a STACK, jack! It was an insane amount of money that was wrapped with a rubber band. I had an expression on my face that said, “What the hell?!”
He then said, “I mean, you know. I’m a gold digger. I like money. If you were to come to my house, you would see stacks of bills in my room. Whenever you go out with me, you know I got you. Money is never an issue for me. I always make sure I have enough cash flow, aight?” His ghetto fabulous talk had definitely shown brightly at this point. So, I just shrugged my shoulders and was happy I didn’t have to pay.
A few days later, on a Sunday, he called me and left a message on my cell phone saying, “You will never believe what I’ve been doing all weekend. I googled you and found out all types of interesting information. I saw you all over your college’s website. It must be nice being you.”
Okay. I was freaked out. Googling people isn’t that strange, but you don’t TELL someone about it! Well, nonetheless, I decided to meet up with him to get dinner. While at dinner he said, “Yeah, if you google me, you won’t find anything.”
So, his sorry attempt to deter me from googling him was not going to work because of course I would google him. I typed in his first name and then his last and, alas, I didn’t find anything. Then, I had a small voice, or maybe an ancestor, in my head tell me, “Type in his name and then the words ‘Washington, DC’ afterwards.” I did that and I found the most astounding, jaw dropping, unbelievable information.
It was a website that was from a county in Virginia and they had a service called Crime Solvers. It had a mug shot of the guy I had been dating and said the following:
“Warrant for his arrest for failure to appear in court for a suspended license, domestic assault, and carnal knowledge. If you have any information about this individual, you can receive up to $1,000.”
I freaked out once again. I knew it was him because his freaking mug shot was next to the information about him. So, I called my Aunt, a prominent lawyer in Cleveland, to ask what “carnal knowledge” meant. I mean, I could have googled that too, but I needed to bring in my favorite auntie on this news. In a nutshell, it is sex with a minor!
So, this explains the wad of cash thing, because he probably had to get paid under the table for whatever “job” he did, since he couldn’t apply for a real job with a warrant out. Wow.
Now, of course, communication with him had to cease; this was not in question, but I did contemplate turning him in, reaping the benefits, and getting my own stack!