Follow Through

After I first crossed, and was close to a few gay Greeks, one day we were just talked about dating, and it got to me & someone asked me to describe my love life. After taking a deep sigh, and thinking for a second, trying to put it into words a part of my life that often leaves me speechless I came up with the perfect analogy. “My love life is like the pledge process” I said. I went further and explained that every season it seems that a new crop of prospects pop up from out of no place and I go from not having one single prospect but to having on average five to six. This I deem the interest meeting phase, all of sudden a lot of people have interest and seemingly look like viable candidates.

From there to get on line, you have to have certain requirements, in the NPHC orgs you need the right GPA, recommendation letters, money, etc, etc. But with me you need to be HIV negative, got things going for yourself, and not surrounded by drama. Using this criterion about 2 people drop or stop calling, which to me is no loss because hey those are attributes that I am not willing to compromise on. After that everyone is put on pre-pledging, a time where you learn about the organization, the chapter, and it is highly suggested that you know prepare yourself for the upcoming activities. Applying that to me, it’s called the pre-dating, getting to know people talk to folks on the phone, seeing if they follow through with things that they said they were going to do. Therein lies the problems, with me I never get past this phase, guys just lose interest or have no real concept of follow through with me. This is where the line drops, and this is were the dating process ends.

A perfect example of this is what is currently happening now, four guys and out of the four, ATL, NJ, NY, SC are all fucking up, well all except for NY. NY is cool, and hopefully out schedules will permit so that we can actually visit each other. I called ATL three times and left two messages, no response, so I know what that means. NJ promised to call me back, that bama never did, and hit me via yahoo a few hours before he left to go for the French Open, SC, I’m on the fence about, and I met him a few days prior to his best friend from SC coming to town. I called him twice and he both times we talked, he made noise about how we should go out for drinks, but I called him this weekend to no avail, maybe he was busy with best friend which I know I don’t call people until a day or two after I hang out with my best friend.

For a long time I thought it was something I did that would just make people not care to follow though, but then I realized that even with networking, African-Americans are not really taught the art of follow through, when it comes to interactions with people. My theory is that most African-Americans were raised in a manner and in an environment that you were always in contact with the same people, members of your church, neighbors, and people in school, so the need to follow through was taken care of itself because you had constant interaction with those individuals. But when someone is not constantly in your face you tend to forget, not really lose interest but forget or are not really cognizant of how to build relationships without seeing them on daily basis.

Some may argue that this is across the board with any and every group of people. I would agree with that as well, but in my interactions with other groups of people, they tend to have a much better follow through rate, regardless of how it is.

Just my thoughts