I have always been fond of the conventional romantic tale where a man of supreme gallantry rescues his lady love from an impending doom in the form of [insert wicked stepmother, a fire-breathing dragon, or  lightning quicksand HERE.]

Some have even resorted to calling me a damsel in distress. So what if I can’t assemble a TV stand on my own or change a flat tire? Those things don’t even happen a lot, so why were my friends assigning me the moniker? Well, It didn’t help that I cut my “cinema-loving” teeth on Rob Reiner’s The Princess Bride and soothed my “literature-loving” palate early on with Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter.

The storylines that always seemed to please me the most were that of a man saving a woman.  It could have been an act of “saving from” anything at all: from society’s ills, from someone else’s tyranny, from nature’s unpredictable grip or from my favorite –  herself. I really am a “damsel,” I thought, as of late. In fact, my first screen name (you know, the one that we created for AOL instant messenger in the late 90s), was Damsel TT. Wow! It was true. I didn’t realize how indoctrinated I was until I saw Walter Mosley’s Lift for the second time this year.

The play features two corporate-climbing co-workers who meet for the first time when a catastrophic event traps them in a skyscraper elevator in New York City. In the darkness, Theodore “Big Time” Southmore and Tina Pardon form an intimate bond, sharing their deepest fears and darkest secrets, touching on issues of race, culture, and class. I saw it first at Crossroads Theatre back in April and wrote a review encouraging the sophisticated theatergoer to check it out.

Now, Lift is running at the 59E59 Theaters, directed by Marshall Jones, III until this Sunday, November 30.

The cast features Biko Eisen-Martin as Southmore and MaameYaa Boafo as Pardon. I didn’t realize how moved I was by the dialogue until I heard it a second time around.

Theodore was a Black man who – although astute, intelligent and hard-working – seemed to be more focused on doing whatever it took to self-medicate and self-appease – even if that meant allowing his female counterpart to fend for herself.

Through careful examination of Southmore’s behavior while they are trapped, Tina figures this out. Her commentary revealed how much I desire to be “saved” in a relationship but - the fact is - I don’t really expect that the Black man is capable of doing it. Just like Tina, I don’t believe in a Black man’s innate ability to think outside of himself.

Look at his history. When he tried to put down roots, he was torn from his “wife” and children to satisfy the economic goals of his “master” (modern day translation: his manager or VP). He made attempts to stand for righteousness, but he was gunned down in front of his family (case in point: Medgar Evers). This cycle - albeit not at all his fault - resulted in husbandless then fatherless homes which in turn transformed the Black woman into someone who is either drawn to the man who treats her like the sex object she thinks he likes or a woman who pulls away from the man due to mistrust or belief in his White counterpart.

This was the case for Tina. She spits out the venomous claim that at least a White man “wouldn’t tell me to pee in the corner like some dog."

Therein lies such truth. I mistrust you because you ask me to lower my standards to suit your own limited capacity or insecurities. I mistrust you because you continually downplay my own worth. I withdraw from you because you are a non-commital, adolescent boy who would rather explore multiple clitorises than settle down with just one. I know for a fact that your kind could never rescue me, if needs be.

I even wrote about it on a Facebook post last week after watching the documentary about the Navy Seal who killed Usama Bin Laden. Men of this stock are fearless. No matter how dangerous the mission, they are in it to win it. I wrote:

This is totally the reason I'd be into marrying a military guy (especially a SEAL). If he can manage to successfully endure daily 4-mile runs, 1000-meter swims, 4-hour rest periods, tied legs and arms underwater for drown-proofing, continual 132 hours of physical labor and freezing cold tolerance, WHAT WOULDN'T HE DO to protect me??!!!‪#‎NavySEALSareSexy ‪#‎NavySEALSarehot‪#‎GodblessOurVets

 

 

Sadly, I know very few Black men who fit this bill. And perhaps Hollywood has done a number on me.  Perhaps I couldn’t get enough of Dean Cain’s mild-mannered, yet hopelessly devoted rendition of Clark Kent in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.  Perhaps I could have been more sympathetic of the sex-crazed, ambitious, hotshot lawyer character of William Dent on UPN’s Girlfriends.

The fact is the only fool-proof way to know that a man is responsible enough to shoulder the God-given weight of a future household is to see how comfortable he is in rising to the occasion of “lifting” his lady love from the quicksand of life, from the tyranny of an abusive parent, from the howling wind of a NYC snowstorm or from her bad habit of skipping gym days.

Anything less will provoke mistrust or a departure from the race in which the cowardice exists.