I met her the way it felt like most people met in 2006. Which means we met on Myspace. Its search function allowed you to filter for gender (female), age (22-28), location (within 25 miles of 15232) and race (Black). I was 27, newly single and aggressively broke. So browsing curated thumbnails from my bedroom was better than the club.
She checked all my boxes. Fine. Witty. Active. Single. Age-appropriate. Not too crunchy or churchy. Enough of a sense of humor to think I’m funny, which is all that really mattered. And, most important, had shared enough information on her profile that I could craft a DM to prove I’d read it. “Finally, someone else who thought Val Kilmer was the best Batman.”
She replied 20 minutes later — “He was the best Elvis too!” — proving she’d read my profile (I’d listed “True Romance” as one of my favorite movies). I waited 15 minutes to write back. Couldn’t seem too thirsty. She possessed no such need for performative coolness and wrote back immediately. Four hours and dozens of jokes, vets and flirts later, we agreed to meet at Barnes & Noble at 7 the next evening.
I rolled up at 6:50. She was already there. It reminded me of that diner scene in “Goodfellas,” where Jimmy arrives so early to meet Henry that Henry deduces that Jimmy planned to kill him. I didn’t think she wanted me dead, so this was good news. In person she was everything she was online, but 3 percent better. The conversation was easy, like water. Not even like solid water, but like walking through a gentle drizzle. We drank tea, we browsed books, we played footsie. It was the third best first date I’d ever been on.
It was a Monday. We made soft plans to kick it that weekend. Maybe a movie. Maybe food. Maybe more. I called Wednesday to confirm.
Voice mail. Hmm.
The next morning, she texted back. “Hey homie! It’s been a crazy week. Rain check for this weekend, but let’s try again soon!”
In movies sometimes it takes a character a few more interactions like this to get the hint — a montage of unreturned texts and indisputably platonic voice mail messages as they pace hallways and make sad faces in car mirrors. This was not that. If the day-later text as a response to my call was a sign, the “Hey homie!” was a flashing neon billboard. I was disappointed, sure. But mostly just confused. I’d been on enough first dates to know when things were going well enough to warrant a second. This had felt like that.
We remained friendly (and still are). Or whatever you call the Tilt-a-Whirl of communication when you text someone Thursday afternoon, and they reply Sunday evening, and you reply Wednesday morning. But even though I had moved on, I was still curious about what had caused her to shift from hot to cold so quickly.
And then, a month or so after our date, she posted one of those rapid response questionnaires to her profile. “Fav food? Tacos! Fav artist? Aaliyah!” As I scrolled down, I found my answer.
“Dealmaker? GREAT SMILE!
Dealbreaker? BAD TEETH!”
When I was 11, and had just moved with my parents to East Lib, Pittsburgh, this brazen stubby white boy started calling me “Beaver” because of my slightly bucked teeth and perpetual overbite, and that nickname stuck. (People who know me from then still know me as “Beav.”) By the time I reached high school and the rest of my face began to match my front teeth, a gap formed between them. Between the gap and the overbite, my teeth did the thing that happens when misaligned entities repeatedly crash into each other. Some grinded, some eroded, some sharpened, some separated from each other — slowly, but decisively, like my mouth was Pangea. (And then, while playing pickup basketball in 2005, an accidental elbow to the grill shifted one of them, closing the front gap by a millimeter or so but also leaving that tooth slightly crooked.)
I cannot recall a time when my teeth were not in need of drastic correction. Specifically, I cannot recall a time when I felt like my teeth were not in need of drastic correction — a feeling that lurked around and eventually consumed me because the world kept reminding me. Cartoons distinguished villains by giving them exaggerated or missing choppers. In movies, if you had noticeably bad teeth, you could be a goblin. Or a dope fiend. Or a Mississippian cannibal. If lucky, you could be the “not hot” dweeb who, by the third act, Frisbees their braces off and becomes Halle Berry. In real life, if I were roasted by friends or heckled by crowds during away games, my teeth were usually the target.
I remember how I felt when first clocking my date in the Barnes & Noble that night. She was sitting at one of those tiny and wobbly circular tables and smiled at me as I approached. I started to smile back, but then I felt like I’d just entered a room to take an exam I’d forgotten to study for. She’d seen all of the pictures on my profile. Her wanting to meet so quickly was an indicator of her enthusiastic approval of them. I was also at least five inches taller than her, which I know is a concern that women who meet men over the internet sometimes have. But she hadn’t seen my teeth. The pictures on my profile captured the range of possible looks I could have without revealing them — smirking during a wedding toast, holding my infant cousin and squinting at her, so close to the camera’s flash that all you saw in my mouth was an indistinguishable white. A gallery curated to hide what I believed needed to be hidden. I was a toothfish.
She’d have to see my teeth eventually though. A relationship can’t blossom if one of the people in it only opens their mouth when their partner blinks. So I decided to open-mouth smile back.
There are infinite possible reasons she could’ve decided that night that I was cool enough to be cool with, but not attractive enough to be more with. First dates are when you’re supposed to be discerning and particular. Which is a nice way of saying petty. And the gap between my front teeth is just one line in that poem.
But I also know enough Black women interested in Black men to know that the symmetrical contrast of straight bright whites against deep brown skin is a thing. And that meeting a man who doesn’t have that thing can be the visual equivalent of the “The Price Is Right” losing horn. And I know that in America, good, strong, bright, straight teeth signal good, strong, bright, straight money. The whiter the teeth, the whiter the credit. An open mouth is a résumé, a Carfax and a FICO score.
And this, I know, is the real source of my neurosis. I’m 43. For 35 or so of those years, I existed either below the poverty line or a missed paycheck away from it. I’ve been broke-adjacent. Broke. Poor. My mouth is a memoir. Of canceled orthodontist appointments when my parents couldn’t afford the premium. Of never having two consecutive years of health care as an adult, until I got Obamacare in 2014. Of shame.
That’s the tricky one. The shame. I know now that there was nothing to be ashamed of. That doing well, while Black in America, is the exception not the norm, and that the exception could change with a coin flip. But then, all I wanted was a pantry. A pantry, to me, meant you had extra. Not too much. Not Jack and Jill money or anything. But just enough to maybe not sweat too hard all the damn time. A pantry also meant good teeth. Cause why wouldn’t you have them if you could afford extra ketchups?
This anxiety ain’t new if you’re Black. We’re the world champs at faking it till you make it. I couldn’t even really do that, though. Because as much as I’d try to stunt, my teeth told the truth.
But maybe my teeth lied to me, too. I think about all the times I’ve been asked why I don’t smile more. It always felt like a taunt, because I’d think “Ain’t it obvious?” But maybe it wasn’t as obvious as I thought. Maybe that’s just me getting gamed by shame. Maybe the Black women who have been interested in me — the Black women who’ve loved me, the Black woman who married me — weren’t compelled to overlook this conspicuous flaw because they liked the other parts, like I was a nice new car with a cracked windshield. Maybe, to them, there was nothing to overlook. Maybe, to them, they were just my teeth. Maybe, to them, I have a nice smile. Maybe when I opened my mouth at that Barnes & Noble, she thought I had a nice smile too.
I could just ask her. We’re still cool. I don’t care as much anymore though. Growth, right? Maturity? Perspective? Nah.
I just have a pantry now. Invisalign too.
Damon Young is the author of “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Blacker” and a columnist for The Washington Post Magazine.
This essay is part of a collaborative project with the Black History, Continued team. Modern Love can be reached at [email protected].
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