Chapter 2: The Inner Ho Struggle

When last we left this corner of the internet we talked briefly about “Wobbly Baby Cow” syndrome, the affliction affecting women attending the Essence Music Festival who chose to wear heels over flat shoes in efforts to test their ankles’ might against the streets of New Orleans. Let’s switch gears a little here. Here’s a scenario that may or may not have been overheard one afternoon at Essence:

Dude 1: Man, that girl you were with at the party was fine as hell. And she was on you hard!

Dude 2: **melancholy** Yeah, I know.

Dude 1: So, y’all gonna hook up later on or what. I know you got special plans for that booty

Dude 2: **deep sigh** Yeah, I did. Not anymore.

Dude1: Why, what happened?

Dude 2: She went to the convention center to hear Tamela Mann sing and ended up rededicating her life to Jesus.

I can imagine for some there is a fierce internal battle that exists between exercising your right as a grown ass male or female adult to be a Randstad Ho (temporary) while on vacation and your adult-ish common sense. I’m a witness that there are few places that test the gangsta and fortitude of your moral compass more than New Orleans, one of the nation’s most popular cities despite their affiliation with the NFL Saints. This is especially true during Essence where the streets become the national epicenter of freakery, a veritable “Ho-asis in the Bayou” (trademark pending) springing forth with the uninhibited dreams of festival goers from all over the country. But if you wear conservative business suits and code switch and conjugate verbs well enough to chair 4-5 conference calls a week at work you certainly deserve to unleash your inner ratchet for a few days, right?

But even after the ladies have been in their group chats and talked at length about their preferred lengths; and men have sufficiently polled their “targets of interest” as to the dates of their arrival and hotels of residence and mapped them out in relation to their own, there is still some semblance of the little angel perched on your shoulder who clocks in just to whisper all the good things that you should be doing instead of the utter filth that you have scheduled in your brain to take place from 2am until about sunrise. I’m certain that it was the angel on the shoulder that told that young lady in the scenario above to go to the convention center before going to brunch knowing good and well Donnie McClurkin gonna be in there singing “Stand” and spurring thots away from their potential thotalicious ways, then the angel clocked out and went on break until it would be needed again at the pool party that started at 6 later that evening.

And so goes the inner ho struggle. If you know you’re up to doing something that’s off-script for your usual character you gotta do what you can to leave that little angel at the crib.That angel won’t stop you from having a good time but it will judge you harshly while sitting criss cross applesauce on the end table next to the bed after your bourbon-fueled bad decisions.

“Girl, what is you doing and where is yo’ draws at?”

“Dude, you ain’t gonna be able to get all her glitter off before you get back to yo’ girl at the crib.”

“I told you we should have gone to see John P Kee. I don’t want to hear about your regret! What’s for breakfast?”

The angel on your shoulder is a hater. It’s the middle school hall monitor. It’s the tattletale kid that lived on your block. It’s also the last voice in a dude’s ear saying, “If you gonna ignore me and do this chick, you might want to find a 2-ply condom. Is there a Hefty brand?”

So it might be a hater, and a nit of an ass, but it’s also your last link to your common sense before you do something crazy.