How to Die Alone With All 15 of Your Cats, Daejon Love Edition

When I was young and feeling punchy, I used to ball up my little, bony fists and punch out a story real quick, with nary a thought about how it might impact me or anyone else.

It was fun!

And I wrote some bangers!

One of those bangers was February 26, 2010's "How to Die Alone With All Fifteen of Your Cats," a rant about that time the mainstream media discovered the oldest story in Black media—why can't Black women find a man?

Wrote The Washington Post back in 2010:

"Black women are in market failure," says writer Karyn Langhorne Folan. "The solution is to find a new market for your commodity. And in this case, we are the commodity and the new market is men of other races."

My response to Folan's sentiment was the following (and apologies to Detroit for catching this stray in my pursuit of a punchline based on the auto industry bailout of 2008):

Market failure? I didn't realize black women were GM stock! Black women! The Detroit of womenfolks!

But I was thinking about this classic Snob post when news broke over the weekend about that very skinny and average-looking dude, Daejon Love, who "signed with the 49ers," then, for four years, allegedly scammed women out of more than $1.3 million. It reminded me of how "hooked on marriage panic" doesn't work for any woman, regardless of race. Not even the sad, failed opportunists who thought they'd bagged a "baller" who was running around shirtless with a 49ers helmet on and not nary an ab in sight.

Like, maybe Google him first? Or ask ChatGPT? Or ask your football-loving cousin? Something! Professional football players, regardless of height, weight, or size, are built like demigods. He was built like a wet noodle. I am confused.

But considering how George W. Bush left so many children behind, none of this is surprising.

Also, when you look at the stigma women still face for being single, while being constantly threatened with how we're all going to be miserable if we won't let a man make us a repository for his misery, it's wild. It's double-wild when it comes to the messages Black women get.

'... And I took that personally.'

I've read some version of "why can't Black women get a man" multiple times, every year of my life, since I've known how to read. I've seen old Ebony Magazines from the 60s posing this question, and in the 60s, people were still getting married straight out of high school and toughing it out for 40 or 50 years through abuse and other horrors because divorce was heavily stigmatized and hard to get. But I guess I'd accepted that this in-house conversation would always be because people love to pathologize everything a Black person does, even other Black people. I didn't start snapping until The Washington Post started writing about it.

And to quote Michael Jordan, I took that personally.

When the "Everybody Hates Black Women and We're All Gonna Die Alone So Find A Man, ANY MAN, And Be All Clingy And Weird" story winds up on FOX News, where, naturally, Bill O'Reilly will look into the camera with all seriousness and find some way to pin this on Obama ... ("The Obamas? Have they made Black women set their standards too high? And are Black women finally desperate enough to let me rub a falafel on them? Questions answered on the next FACTOR!") ... I will officially throw up both my hands, holler and submit.

What do you want from me, mass media, with your sudden interest in a story that has been around the mulberry bush, through the back door, over the river and through the woods and back again? Are you trying to give me a complex on purpose?

The answer is yes. Yes, they were trying to give us a complex on purpose, as always.

But dating narratives around Black women don't rile me up anymore, and haven't for years now. Mostly because the world pretty much caught up to my worldview, even if the Trad wives and dude bros didn't—that it's pointless to panic and there's nothing wrong with being single.

Because single doesn't mean lonely.

Also, as a Black woman who was single for a lot longer than she's been in a relationship, it wasn't for a lack of men. I dated. I met people. I was "in the streets." But we were mostly a bunch of confused dogs barking up some very wrong trees. I liked people who didn't like me and weren't available. People liked me who I did not want and wasn't attracted to. And I did this dance of pointlessness for two decades after my divorce, never taking anyone seriously and never settling down.

While the dating pool is tainted with narcissists and "ethically non-monogamous" men looking to cheat on their "we're just roommates" wives, the common denominator in why I was single was me. Before I met my boyfriend in 2022, I had to take several seats and acknowledge that for decades I hadn't wanted to settle down because being lonely is better than being trapped in a horrible marriage.

It's also better than losing your hard-earned coins to a scammer. But what I really want to know is: will Daejon Love get the Anna Delvey treatment? Like, documentaries, a stint on Dancing with the Stars, and scripted shows about him on Netflix while Georgia McCann from Next Gen NYC throws him a house party with his ankle monitor on?

I mean, I'd watch it!

Lolololol, just kidding. We already know he won't.

Check out the original "How to Die Alone with All Fifteen of Your Cats" below. And again, apologies to Detroit! I didn't know nothing. I was stupid, I was foolish, I was LYING TO MYSELF!!!

How to Die Alone with All Fifteen of Your Cats

By Danielle C. Belton, originally published on The Black Snob on February 26, 2010

One. Get 15 cats.

Two. Keep reading articles like these.

"Black women are in market failure," says writer Karyn Langhorne Folan. "The solution is to find a new market for your commodity. And in this case, we are the commodity and the new market is men of other races."

Market failure? I didn't realize black women were GM stock! Black women! The Detroit of womenfolks!

When my cyber play cousin AverageBro sent me this article my first reaction was to throw up my hands screaming, do a Luvvie-patented "wall slide," then curl up in a corner and cry. Not that these articles depress me because my personal solution to the so-called black marriage crisis is to not worry about it. (Hooked on "Marriage Panic!" did not work for me!) So no. It more so bothers me that these articles seemed to have escaped from the reservations of black female angst -- your pages of Essence and Ebony -- and have trickled out of periodical plantation and are now storming the gates at every conceivable mass media outlet.

When the "Everybody Hates Black Women and We're All Gonna Die Alone So Find A Man, ANY MAN, And Be All Clingy And Weird" story winds up on FOX News, where, naturally, Bill O'Reilly will look into the camera with all seriousness and find some way to pin this on Obama ... ("The Obamas? Have they made black women set their standards too high? And are black women finally desperate enough to let me rub a falafel on them? Questions answered on the next FACTOR!") ... I will officially throw up both my hands, holler and submit.

What do you want from me, mass media, with your sudden interest in a story that has been around the mulberry bush, through the back door, over the river and through the woods and back again? Are you trying to give me a complex on purpose?

I realize that there are these people, called women, and some of them want to get "The Marrieds" all Malcolm X style -- by any means necessary. Shotgun in hand, peepin' out the window for eligible bachelors. And while some of those women have been dealt a raw deal, others have their own personal issues that are keeping them from finding Mr. Right. But if you run around with the mindset "Nobody wants me!" in full blown panic mode how does that actually "help" you? It's like the world is screaming at you in multiple, contradictory ways. Nobody wants black women! Solution: Black women should date outside their race! But WAIT! I thought nobody wanted us? Waaaaaaah! *wall slide*

Acting like no one wants you is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Have no value and you will be devalued. I swear. Sack it up, womenfolk who want to get "The Marrieds!" Telling anyone who will listen that you can't get no satisfaction though you tried is not going to solve the problem.

That said, this particular article is encouraging black women to date outside our race. Good for them. I'm all "Kanye Shrug" about it. I usually am about these sort of things. I find the "Find A White Man" wonder drug a little disingenuous. All men are different. Some men are good, some men are bad. Race has nothing to do with that. (Which one of the interviewees in the article tries to point out, but it gets a little lost in all that "EVERYBODY PANIC!") But if you're also operating under the premise that black women aren't popular with ANYBODY it seems like you're purposely setting up a bunch of folks for perpetual defeat. How exactly do you suddenly get these magical white, Latino, Asian men to chase your ass when they have never chased your ass? And, while no one seems to want to write an article about it, if you ever want to hear a parallel version of this whole "Nobody wants me!" racial dealie from a male perspective go troll some Asian American blogs, message boards and magazines and let the lonely Asian man take you on the mother of all bitch rants.

Rooks’ Asian American male students have said that they’ve been rejected by Asian American women who complain that Asian males “aren’t spontaneous; they don’t laugh; they aren’t tall,” according to Rooks. “Asian men start questioning their identity. They’re asking themselves why they can’t get a date, ‘Is it because I’m Japanese American, Korean American, because of the negative stereotypes, or because I’m a jerk?’”

OMG! Change Asian to black and male to female and ... gosh darn it! It's like looking in a mirror. An angry, bitter, can't-get-laid mirror!

Alleged Asian male bitterness aside, white women with degrees are almost equally frustrated about their options for "The Marrieds," leading me to think this has more to do with the on-going shifts in gender roles in our society than someone just being inherently undateable. It's just HARD to find love, y'all! It was never easy. It was just in the past people got married out of high school and had a couple kids before they hit 25. Your choices were limited. You weren't as mobile. Now you're very mobile and have lots of choices. Men and women have all the choices in the world, and folks take their time about choosing.

But hey, if your goal is to get that gold ring on your finger, more power to you. I just know if you walk around smelling and looking like ten miles of hard up the type of people you attract will reflect that.

Or, I dunno. Go stalk an Asian man. Couldn't hurt.