I need a ruffneck … I need a dude with an attitude

I’ve heard its biological, the need for the aggressive alpha male who will come in and wreck shit and wreck shop.

For me its a need.

I didn’t dream of being a house wife and mother, I dreamt of being a bottom bitch.  I dreamt of the glamorous life of being a mob wife, or some other girl who understood where her man earned his living and did all that was necessary to do to hold him down.

It comes from a place of not having love and family and glamorizing the perceived bond that Hollywood told me existed in that life.

Then I grew breasts and played around the edges of that life.  In my history there is criminal syndicate.  I will never be on a reality TV show talking about it though.  It turns out that the real life doesn’t match up to the fairy tale.

Tony Soprano doesn’t love his family and the Don doesn’t do favors. Not in reality.  In reality the lifestyle hurts and harms.

There is a tinge of ugliness to the life, and it can be hard to get out once you are in, fully in.

The syndicate that I knew no longer exists.  Like many Black men in America today they are residents of the state with numbers instead of names.  They take their three hots and a cot and count the hours until lights out.

I never outgrew my love for the bad boy, the ruffneck though. I am unsure that I ever will.  As I matured I learned to seek out danger from other locations.  I stopped getting wet from pretending not to see the guns on the pool table of my lover and started getting wet over other things.

That adrenaline that comes from danger gets sated in other ways now.

But I still remember those days before Bonnie & Clyde relied on me when I could – and did – take a walk on the wild side. Funny thing was it wasn’t always wild, but the prospect of it kept things interesting so to speak.

My ruffnecks today are the Sons of Anarchy, on television.  I still recall though with immense fondness my nights at the Wheels of Soul. Or teaching a certain someone that you don’t get pulled over in a Ford Taurus while your boys are rocking the newest C class.  Or explaining that you need a cash business to keep the IRS from asking questions, or at least asking too many questions.

I may no longer be that young girl who actively seeks out danger, but there is still a part of me who loves a thug.

 

 

Aphrodite Brown