This one goes out to all the young and up-and-coming housemacks, those who put in work at the crib on the daily. I want to give you this advice and leave you with this lesson so that what happened to me does not happen to you.
So, my wife and I were in the bathroom getting ready for work, and as our custom, we had this deep philosophical conversation going on. And that’s not unusual because often we’ll debate the same subject for days. But this morning she made the mistake of re-hashing old material so I found myself losing interest until finally I turned my attention to the television.
And she was in mid-sentence when I burst out with, “Hey, baby. You should see this. During this baseball game this fan jumped on the field and started running around, and they tasered him. This is hilarious!”
So, she stops in mid-sentence and gives me this incredulous look. “You mean I’ve been going on and on, and you’re not even listening to me? You’re watching some stupid baseball stunt on television?”
I knew I had been caught, and she looked more than a little perturbed, so I tried to convince her that I had indeed been listening. But she called my bluff, and asked me what to tell her just what she said last.
Of course, I had not been listening, and I had no earthly idea what she said last, but I intrepidly took a shot in the dark: “You said, ‘I believe that children are the future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside?’”
We had been talking about education, so I thought this was a pretty good guess. But evidently I was way off the mark because she gave me this nasty look, went back to making up her face, and refused to say anything else. I took this as a reprieve, so I gathered my things and headed on out the door.
Well, later that night after as the day was winding down and the children had retired to their bedroom, I sat in my home office completing one or two miscellaneous tasks. When I was done I got up and headed into our bedroom, and there she was sprawled across the divan looking like some naughty librarian.
She was wearing my huge University of Florida College of Arts and Sciences sweatshirt, and had her hair pulled back in this tight, severe bun with these sexy, sexy reading glasses perched right on the very tip of her nose.
But get this. This is the clincher. She was reading this big, thick book. And she knows what big, thick books do to me. Big, thick books drive me absolutely wild! But I played it cool. That’s the first rule of housemacking. Always play it cool.
So, I went on in the bathroom and took me a nice hot shower. Then I applied three separate layers of lotion. The second layer I applied because I really needed it. I’m an extra ashy brother, and if I apply less than two layers, I stand the chance of turning goose gray. The third layer, though, I applied purely for effect. I wanted that shiny look.
Then I strategically applied a little something, something I picked up in Spain, this exotic fragrance called Pheromones de un Toro Muy Virilo. Roughly translated, that’s Pheromones of a Very Virile Bull. I figured that if it worked for that bull, it would certainly work for the Max-ster.
I finished it all off by slipping into this pair of silk, golden pajama bottoms, and a pair of suede house slippers complete with my monogram, MRR. This is my official housemack uniform that I wear for those special occasions.
Now, peep game! Peep game!
I stepped out of the bathroom, and stood there posing in the archway. I dimmed the lights in the main room, but left the lights on behind me so that as I stood there posing, the light from behind me created this soft silhouette.
Then I used the remote to turn on the stereo and went straight to that old Al Green’s Greatest Hits CD. I turned down the sound just low enough to hear the music and hear Al hit those high notes, but I set the bass really, really high so that when Al moaned, it would cause the speakers to vibrate sending a shiver up your spine.
But you wouldn’t know anything about that. That’s advanced housemacking, and I wouldn’t suggest you try this except under the tutelage of an expert. You have to crawl before you can walk.
Anyway, I’m standing there looking like some shiny Nubian king and smelling all bull-sy. I know those bull pheromones were working because the moment I stepped into the room, my wife asked me if I smelled something.
And in the back of my mind, I have this image of the motherland, and the ancestors drumming and singing around this huge bonfire in the village center in celebration of black love. I could practically hear the rhythm of the drums in my head: boom-back-ticka-ticka, boom-back-ticka-ticka, boom-back-ticka-ticka.
So, then she looks up and sees me standing there, and she smiles this coy smile and chuckles just a little. “Umph. It looks like a have your full attention now,” she says.
So, I kick in with my Barry White voice, all deep and stuff: “Baby, you got everything Max has, now and forever.”
Now those ancestors drumming and dancing in the village center in my head have worked themselves into a virtual frenzy. The bonfire had reached about twenty-five feet high, and they are beating those drums and dancing like their lives depend on it.
“You sure about that?,” she asks.
“I’m two hundred percent sure,” I growl back, my voice one octave lower.
“Then this is what I would like you to do for me,” she says as she lets that big, thick book slide down those big, pretty legs of hers to the floor. She pats the divan right next to her with her hands. “Sit down right here, and let’s finish the conversation we were having this morning.”
And just then in the back of my head, the ancestors stopped drumming and stopped singing. They looked at each other, shrugged their shoulders, and began putting up the drums and unplugging the amplifiers and the microphones before they extinguished the bonfire and retired to the ancestral huts for the night. Nothing to celebrate here.
#housemackfail
