I Had a Thing For Bad Boys
Sagging jeans, oversized plain-colored tees and fresh air force ones. That was my version of “bae.” He walked with confidence, sometimes wearing a fitted cap to match. In the summer, he went shirtless or wore a white wife beater to show off his illegal tattoos he got in his friend’s garage.
He talked using a unique language that not too many understood, but everyone respected. It was a mix between a New Orleans and South Florida drawl. He wasn’t the cutest or the most popular guy. Yet, he was the most feared individual around. He was a football player, always in trouble for being overly aggressive on the field. A “thug” or a “gangsta,” as they say. A kid from a bad neighborhood who’d beat anyone’s ass because he couldn’t stand to see me treated bad.
He engaged in illegal activity that you never asked him about or confirmed to others. He was a bad boy who skipped class or school when he felt like it, who loved his mom with all his heart. Who taught me things like how to sneak out of my window at night and to forget my birth name because my new name was Baby. I wanted to be someone’s “Shawty,” his ride or die. The one who grabs his attention by being the “hottest girl in the city, baby you can’t ignore it... He’d show me off, letting everyone know I was his.
That was my favorite song in high school. I thought this guy would defend his woman and protect her by any means necessary. I walked the halls of my small-town high school thinking I was untouchable. Those are the things I thought made a relationship.
“I exposed her to real and now she hate lame .”
But at 14, 15 years old what did I really know about real relationships or men? At that age, I was dealing with boys.
The nostalgia of dating a bad boy was pretty popular, especially in music during that time. Ace Hood had girls wanting to be that “ride or die” or down-ass chick because it meant you were loyal and supportive of your bad boy and all of his activities no matter how illegal or wrong they were. Everyone wanted to date the guy who had the hood persona of being feared and powerful at the same time. It was the adolescent version of a power couple.
Today you can keep the “shawty,” “ride or die” or any of those other relationship terms that describe a loyal woman. I’ll take a “Yo, excuse me miss, I saw you from across the room” and not a “Damn shawty, you bad as hell.” Because being a shawty might just get me locked up or messed up, and I like to go home at night and watch Netflix.
