I remember when I was a middling teen, I was involved in this youth group. Even at the time, I was skeptical of my adopted parent’s religion but I enjoyed the social aspect being home schooled.
The group every year had a harvest festival in October. I have always loved autumn colors so I looked forward to attending even though I don’t do public events generally.
They usually consisted of me becoming one with a wall or shadow in a convenient spot near no one.
Well, at this particular one, I was meeting my friend J. J is a douche, but he was my douche. I pulled up in my 96’ Cherokee as I always do, bumping something extraordinarily inappropriate for a church setting (probably Tech N9ne at the time) and we dapped and went to go scope out some cute punkins.
This chick Hailey that had an enormous crush on me was present. Well, so was my still very much alive appreciation for feminine beauty. The only difference between now and then being, I didn’t care who saw me admiring the way some light blue jeans complement some creamy skin…
So yeah, I see Hailey, she sees me see her, and I see her get nervous and pretend she didn’t see me while informing her friend (J’s sister) that I was looking at her.
At least, that’s how I took it as she was twirling her pretty long raven hair around her little finger facing away from me while subtly not so subtly jerking her head in my direction.
Well, being the Sadge I am, I strode up to burst any bubble of safety she thought she had and cheerily scared the denim off of her. While I was en route I couldn’t help but allow my eyes to wander as I had never seen her in jeans. It was a nice break from the bland ‘church clothes’ I was used to.
So, I spread my cheer and then quickly lost interest as I noticed there were many other pretty girls I’d never seen before there, so J and I made ourselves scarce to do stuff.
I went to the bathroom and when I came back, J walked up to me with ‘you’re in trouble’ eyes and said “Bro…”
I was like, “Heh?!” and quickly tried to remember if I had been mean mugging people, talked shit about someone in someone’s hearing and a hundred other such thoughts.
He shook his head and was like, “Bro, Hailey’s Dad saw you…”
I hit em with the…
“…?”
“Staring at her ass. He saw you staring at her ass.”
“Me? What? How? Me?!”
I had never been caught by anyone as far as I could remember looking at anyone cause I tried to hide it. My adopted mom was wholly to blame for this. Lots of weird shame stuff.
So, back to confused nay, bewildered me. I was like, “What do I do? Do I like…I don’t know, apologize?”
He said nah, he’ll kick your ass.
Ha! Wrong little Sadge to say this to, but I had never even seen her dad before so I didn’t know which man to direct a rebellious mug towards so I just eyed all of the men around me until I found the one who was staring daggers at me. I got nervous cuz of the stare but then I felt it:
Shame
Shame that I had looked at his little girl. Shame that I was a dirty little perverted boy that had the gall to even think of that. Shame that me, one of the only mixed black guys there, was looking at this cookie cutter white girl as if I was good enough for her.
So yeah. I might have found the origin of my ‘girl-nosis’. Hopefully LDU can read 
P.S almost every girl in church treated me differently after that. I don’t think Hailey even talked to me again. Ironically though, her friend/J’s sister and I became really close and a couple of years ago tried to get together but… That’s another story.
Anyways,I was already sorta looked down on cuz I smoked weed and my siblings had spread that I got into trouble for watching porn and that’s I didn’t go for a month at one point. So yeah, that didn’t help a ninja’s reputation.
P.P.S
This week’s counted tips so far equal out to $30.
