CHAPTER I

F*ck Boy Shit Was Passed Down

Inspired By Herman Clinton Coley

When I meet women and we begin discussing dating, I always hear the same bullshit line, “Dating in 2021 is trash.” Every time I hear that line I want to end the date on the spot. I’m sure you’re wondering why this makes me upset. It doesn’t. It’s just tired and redundant. My question to women who say this is, “When was dating any better?” Talking to women who think like this feels like I’m talking to MAGA people. When was America great? Let’s be serious. I digress, but you get the point. Please tell me when dating was “better?” *I’ll wait.*

One woman my age (born in 1987) told me dating was better in her grandparent’s era. First of all, you weren’t around in the 60s. I bet 60s women were saying the same thing about men back then. She then proceeds to tell me how men just treated women better back then. Really? The 1950s and 1960s were when grandfathers legit had two whole families within a 30-mile radius that didn’t know about each other. Listen to this dating story: In 1964, Sam Cooke was shot and killed, right? His homeboy Bobby Womack married Sam Cooke’s wife less than three months later and then had an affair with Sam’s daughter. Go ahead and let the idea go that men in the 60s treated women way better. F*ck boy behavior ain’t new ladies. It’s been going on forever.

Women talk about how men back in the day were better but who do you think taught us to be f*ck boys? We weren’t born like this. We learned it from our f*ck boy ancestors. F*ck boy behavior is passed down from generation to generation through word-of-mouth, music, movies and all that. Mainly through music and our precious R&B. In June of 1988, Guy released their self-titled debut album. On that album, there’s a song called Piece of My Love. Aaron Hall tells his side piece that she can’t have all of him because he’s not totally free but she can have a piece of his love. A piece. Not the whole thing but a piece. The funny thing about it is that the song is so melodic and beautiful that you miss that he is legitimately cheating on his girlfriend. Aaron is telling his side chick that she can have a piece of his love. The only piece she’s getting is his dick but that’s another story. Aaron had his boys Teddy and Damien harmonize the fuck shit with him.

R&B will have you bobbing your head to f*ck boy shit. Let me give you another music example. On my thirteenth birthday, June 20, 2000, Donell Jones dropped the single Where I Wanna Be. I was somewhere in an Allen Iverson jersey being a f*ck boy in training while Donell Jones was in a music video banging on a window with a leather coat and f*ck boy top hat. This man was upset that his woman moved on with her life after he told her, “I’d rather leave than to cheat.” Did you sing it out loud like I did? Donell broke up with his woman because there is a lot of lust inside of him and he needs some time to be alone. Translation: He is a famous singer. He wanted to f*ck other women and didn’t want to cheat, so breaking up was the non-f*ck boy thing to do. The man asked himself, “Do I leave, do I stay, do I go?” thinking he was doing the right thing. Then he swiddled dee dee deeeeeppp his ass in the video outside of a diner in the cold, mad as shit because his ex decided that getting some new penis was the best thing for her after Donnell broke her heart. That’s f*ck boy shit. I was 13 watching this, learning the ins and outs of being toxic. The lesson I learned is to break up when you want to cheat then get mad at her if she chooses herself.

Fellas, I’m not here to trash our f*ck boy ancestors in music. They’re kings and we should lift them up as such. Y’all know we have to give women detailed examples, PowerPoint, facts, dates and what they were wearing to make a point. If you have ever argued with a woman, you know exactly what I mean. The point here is this is nothing new. F*ck boy’s behavior didn’t start in 2021 and dating has never been perfect. To think dating in 2021 is trash is absurd to me. Stop romanticizing the past. Yo mama, yo mama’s mama and her mama were saying the same shit. Bobby Womack, Aaron Hall and Donnell Jones proved men were trash in three different eras. They don’t speak for all men but we all know dating has always been trash. Always. F*ck boys have always been around. So cut this generation of men a break.

We learn habits that shape our outlook and we don’t even know it. I learned about relationships from my old heads. Growing up, I saw how they talked about women and how sex was a sport. I thought it was cool to call women bitches and act like you don’t give a shit. I thought it cool to fuck her friends, too.

Men passed down these ideas. Music played a significant part in how I was raised and how most men in my era were taught how to treat women. The songs I referenced earlier didn’t have a f*ck boy effect because I wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics as a kid. I was too busy bopping, snapping my finger and singing the chorus instead of digesting what the hell I was singing. I also learned how to be a f*ck boy through movies and television. This book doesn’t happen without me paying homage to one of the greatest f*ck boys of all time: Marcus Graham. If you do not know who Marrrrrccccuuuussssss is, he is a fictional character played by Eddie Murphy in the movie Boomerang. Marcus Graham was a premium plus f*ck boy from the jump. In the opening scene, he sees a beautiful woman (Lela Rochon) walking a dog. He pays someone for their leash and acts like he lost his dog. Wholetime, Marcus doesn’t have a dog. Anyway, she feels terrible for him. He gets the number, gets the date and gets the yams (a Philly colloquialism for vagina). In true f*ck boy fashion, Marcus never calls her again because it was hammer time on her toes.

This story isn’t about Marcus per se. It’s emphasizing that one: the Boomerang soundtrack spawned a no f*ck boy anthem, Love Should’ve Brought You Home Last Night by Toni Braxton, and two: what I saw on TV had a lasting effect on me and how I treated women for years to come. I didn’t see the movie in 1992 because I was only five when it came out. I watched and digested it when I was 16 on the phone with a young lady. She saw a beautiful love story about a confused man who found the woman for him. That is a beautiful interpretation but that is not what I saw as a 16-year-old who wanted to smash everything moving.

I saw a guy who was oozing with confidence. Marcus had swag because he was good-looking, successful, had money and knew what to say to women to get what he wanted. This guy had all the answers and used them to his advantage. Watching that movie didn’t make me a f*ck boy but it did influence a lot of the bullshit I put women through in my early twenties. I now realize why young men gravitated to the f*ck boys and became one. Because in the end, the fuck boy always wins. This is the main reason I liked Marcus Graham. The f*ck boy won, and most times, the f*ck boy always wins. It’s not that the nice guy finishes last. I don’t think that’s true. It’s that the f*ck boy always wins.

After all the bullshit Marcus put Angela (Halle Berry) through, she took his ass back through after enough “Baby please”s and “I love you and miss you”s. This man told his girlfriend to her face that she made him a better man for another woman. Fellas, let’s keep it 100. He shouldn’t be able to come back from that. That should’ve been the nail in the coffin but it’s Marcus Graham. He’s our f*ck boy superhero and he won.

The F*ck Boy Always Wins.

When I was a f*ck boy, I won all the time. That’s why my father and I are the tag team champions—a quick backstory on my father and me: my dad was my right-hand man. We shared a two-bedroom apartment in my late teens and early twenties and it was legit like living with my tag team partner. I was the Road Dogg Jesse James and he was Bad Ass Billy Gunn. What made us champions was that my dad assisted me in sealing the deal with women. We had a system when I would bring a girl to the house. Before we would get there, I would text my father a name and he would respond, “Got it.” For the sake of this story, we will name her Tiffany.

Before I tell you the plan, I want to warn you this shit doesn’t work anymore, fellas. Don’t read this idea and think, “I can get away with this.” You cannot and you will not get away with this. Women are a lot more advanced and this trick worked in 2007. But from a 21-year old f*ck boy’s point of view, this is a perfect plan.

I figured out that women wanted to feel special around 21 years old. They wanted to feel like everything you said and did to them was sacred and personal to just the two of you. I knew this from hanging out with women platonically but couldn’t figure out how to apply this game to my dating life. It hit me one day when my ex-girlfriend Tiffany was at my house with my father and me. She would crack up laughing at everything my father would say. She loved how brutally honest he was and how he shared stories from when I was growing up. I was getting mad at first because insecure, 21-year-old Clint thought his dad was trying to embarrass him which was no laughing matter. I was trying to wrap up my dad’s stories because she was laughing a little too hard. Plus every time I would chime in...