Age Ain't Nuttin But a Number

Finding someone to hook up with at any age is hard to do, from my own experiences and others around me, the older you get the harder it gets.

Believe it or not as an 18 year old my dating opportunities were pretty limited. You see I didn’t have a car and I worked at Mickey D’s, so opportunities for me were limited by my meager finances.

Back then Jimmy Crackcorn was on and poppin’, we’re talking about the era of the big drug dealers, people blingin’ back then were into some illegal shit. It wasn’t unusual to see a guy 18, 19 years old driving a BMW. Dealers back then were everywhere; some of everyone had a package on the street and crews of people working for them. These guys had pockets that literally looked like they had the mumps. Big rope chains, beepers and fresh Fila gear was everywhere. If you had all of that and a car – you could get any girl you wanted. And it seemed like all of the pretty girls wanted drug dealers back then.

If you (like me) didn’t have all of that then you had to run your game someplace else. White girls were never my thing I couldn’t rock like that. Not that there is anything wrong with white women, I just prefer black women. All of my home boys were into white girls but I couldn’t do it. So that left me with girls who ranged in age from 15 - 17.

It has taken me almost twenty years to figure out why that was. Now I know why.

Believe it or not there isn’t a whole lot of difference (maturity wise) between a 15 year old girl and an 18 year old boy. Although we’d like to think there is, there isn’t. Especially if that young man is not in college (like I wasn’t). Without the presence of girls his own age, an 18 year old has no choice but to go with young girls. Girls of 18 are more mature than boys of 18, and they are usually trying to get with older guys. Think about it, an 18 year old girl can easily get into places that an 18 year old guy can’t, like clubs. For whatever reason fake ID’s are readily available to girls of that age.

Guys at 18 aren’t usually ready to dress up and go out – but girls of that age are. To a 15 year old girl an 18 year old boy is mysterious because he is more mature than the boys at school.

My home boy Babyface told me something back then that has stuck with me to this day, Face, who was 22 at the time used to say, ‘Pussy doesn’t have an age.”

I thought (and still think) that is one of the most retarded statements ever made. But it was necessary for him to believe that because women his own age weren’t interested in him, because he didn’t have the things that a 22 year old man should have: his own place, a nice car, and a decent paying job.

I told him something like, “Sure it does, 18 months in county jail if you’re caught with the wrong girl.”

He didn’t care.

When it comes to sex we’ll make ourselves believe all kinds of crazy shit.

By the time I was in my twenties I was no longer interested in younger girls, I had more options available to me (I had a car). I wanted someone who could relate to the things I was interested in and had similar experiences (time wise) to mine.

One hot ghetto day at the long forgotten Festival at the Lake in Oakland, a girl caught my eye. She had long curly hair, chinky eyes and big hoop earrings (I don’t care what you say about big hoop earrings I like them on women, so go jump off a bridge) she would remind you of Ice T’s ex wife Darlene, yeah man, she looked like that!

Our eyes met for a couple of seconds, she looked at me and said, ‘Whassup you wanna holla or what?’

By this time I was 26 years old I was catching women left and right and to be honest with you I still liked hood rats back then.

As I got closer to her I noticed a joint in her mouth, it was so small that you couldn’t call it a joint anymore, because it was smoked down to about the size of a finger nail, it was what you would call a ‘roach’. This thing was somehow lodged into the crack of her mouth; I mean this sucker was barely holding on to the corner of her lips. She must’ve been smoking that shit all day!

Anyway I sat down beside her and started talking to her, every other word was ‘nigga this’ and ‘bitches that’. “Damn”, I thought to myself, ‘what in the hell am I doing here?”
“Yo, how old are you sweetheart?” I finally asked.
‘17’, she said with confidence.
I sat there and thought about it for a second. This girl looks good as hell. But this girl has the worst attitude. And not only that she is entirely too young for me to be around.

My thoughts were interrupted by her asking me, “What, you have a problem with that or somethin’?”
“Yeah”, I told her, “no disrespect though, you got it goin’ on but…”
“It’s all good”, she said, ‘if I ain’t what you looking for then agitate the premises.”

Caught off guard by her remark I wanted to break her down with my mastery of the art and science of that other English language: Cuss words. But I refrained from that because I didn’t want to carry myself that way at 26 years old. A little voice in my head told me that not only was I too old for her, but I was too old to be there.