Black and Blue (#TBT)

It was right around 7 a.m. I was half asleep but could hear the faint chugging of the PeopleMover outside my bedroom window. Closer, I could hear bells. It took me 5 seconds to realize that my phone was ringing. I picked it up. It was my good friend, X.

She had returned to Detroit after a trip to Vegas with her boyfriend. She started to tell me about it.

“There’s a good part and a bad part.”

“What?”

“He bought me a dress…”

“That’s sweet.”

“… for 7,200 dollars!”

“That’s serious.”

“It’s blue. Really short. It’s a tube dress. The sides are all open. And it has like, black elastic strips, connecting the front and the back…”

So far it sounded all good, “So what’s the bad part?”

“No one will buy it from me.”



I fell out laughing. I should have known that X, the hardest working, fastest talking, do-or-die hustler since Terrence Howard in Hustle and Flow, would try to move the hot item ASAP.

I advised her not to sell it. It was a gift, and more importantly, at some point, without a shadow of doubt, he was going to want to see her in the dress. What logical explanation could she possibly give for not being able to produce it?

X insisted that he would never know. She had a water-tight game plan together- if he ever brought it up, she would pretend that she had already picked out something that she had her heart set on wearing. And if he pushed the matter, she would play the “you-are-trying-to-control-how-I-dress” card… Girls na wa sha.

In her defence though, X is still a student and I know that when she looked at the dress all she could see hanging off the hanger was a money order, cashier’s cheque, promissory note or some other monetary instrument which really just needed to be converted into cold hard cash for tuition, gas, rent and bills. Or actually… maybe just shoes. Lots and lots of them.

I cautioned and cautioned. But X would not listen.

Instead, she flipped it on me. “Lawyer!!! Buy it from me now. I will give you for seven grand.”

She proceeded to explain how only 50 of the dresses had ever been made. Halle Berry had one. Paris Hilton had one. Beyonce had six.

Very good for Beyonce and friends. Clap for them.

It’s a freaking recession- if I give you seven grand for two tiny strips of blue cloth held together by black elastic, it better come with a seamstress that will convert it into a new style every morning for me to wear everyday for the next 2 years.

I kept trying to convince her not to sell it but I knew that instead of a gorgeous albeit slutty blue dress, all X could see was a return trip to Nigeria, a couple of designer purses, a few designer sunglasses, 4 or 5 pairs of shoes and maybe 5 regular dresses. (Yup, if you shop right, it can be done.)

X just wouldn’t budge. “I just need to find another sucker to buy this dress for his girlfriend and let re-selling it be her problem not mine.” Na wa for girls, sha.

I warned her one last time, “If he ever finds out you sold this dress, first, he will feel hurt, second, he will never buy you anything again and last and definitely not least, you will look reeeeeally trifling.”

X sold the dress on eBay.

A couple weeks later, I was in bed, half asleep. It was around 7am. I could hear the PeopleMover in the distance and a ringing noise in my room. I picked up the phone. It was X- in a panic. Her boyfriend was taking her to Valentine’s day dinner and he wanted her to wear the dress- that night. What of the water-tight game plan? It would not work because she had already picked out his own outfit for the outing. Trouble.

She was stuck up shit creek… without a paddle. I wanted so badly to say “I told you so” but I opted instead to be a good friend. I laid out her options for her:

1. Say the dress woke up one day, wore slippers, said it was going out to buy akara and never came back

2. Say aliens abducted you, Halle Berry, Beyonce and Paris Hilton because they needed the fabric to complete the spaceship that would allow them to return to their home planet

3. Say armed robbers broke into your house, slapped you three times and took the dress

OR…

4. Tell the truth

As you might imagine, none of these options were appealing to X but she chose number 4.

That night, an hour before her boyfriend was supposed to pick her up, I stopped by her house.

I have never seen anyone look so morose in my life. It was Valentine’s day and there was obviously going to be a fight. And even worse, he was obviously going to win.

I listened to her agonize over it for twenty minutes. Lamenting about how much she regretted selling the dress, how she had learned a painful lesson and how she would never ever again in her life sell something that someone had given to her out of love. EVER.

When she was done, I handed her a plastic bag. She opened it and pulled out two strips of blue fabric held together with black elastic strips. There was a deafening scream.

“Oh my gosh! Were you the one who bought the dress? You did it to teach me a lesson?”

“No, fool. That’s from Bebe. You owe me $179.99. Plus tax.”

She was elated. She changed dresses. Her boyfriend picked her up. He told her how sexy she looked, none the wiser. He took her to the flyest restaurant. Then to top it all off- he presented her with a red Herve Leger bandage dress. It was gorgeous. She was happy. He was happy. There was love in the air. It was the perfect Valentine’s. All was right with the world.

The next morning- 7 a.m., half asleep, the PeopleMover and the ringing- X was on the phone, “So Koko, when you went to Bebe yesterday, did you see any red bandage dresses?”

Girls na real wa sha.

#TBT, written in 2009