A Good Man is Hard to Find
. . . When You Don't Know What He Looks Like

by Brandon Massey

I felt like the Invisible Man.

It was a balmy Saturday afternoon, and I was having lunch on the sun-drenched patio of a Caribbean restaurant in downtown Atlanta. I dined alone, enjoying a meal of jerk chicken, beans, rice, and limeade. At the table beside me, two attractive, twenty-something sisters sipped iced tea-- and bemoaned their inability to meet single, eligible black men.

"I told my Mama that I might not ever get married," one of the women said. "But I don't think she gets it. Things aren't the way they used to be back in the day, when you married the guy you met at church. Nowadays, if you don't get married soon after you graduate from college, the pickings are slim to none."

"You ain't lying," her friend said. "Every man I meet--every decent man--is married or gay. The rest of 'em are either thugs or playas. It's not only like that in Atlanta. It's everywhere. Where can I find just one good man?"

I wanted to raise my hand and say, "Right here." I was single. I wasn't a thug or a playa. I was gainfully employed. I didn't use drugs, and I'd never been married or fathered any children out of wedlock, either. Shoot, I'd even been told by some women that I was handsome.

But to the sisters on the patio, I was invisible. Earlier, when I'd been led to my table by the hostess, I'd cast a friendly smile in their direction, and they didn't give me so much as an acknowledging nod. I might have been little more than a ghost dropping in on a favorite haunt.

I ran into the same problem wherever I went. At the grocery store, women checked their shopping lists when they saw me pushing my cart along the aisle. In the bookstore, they intensified their reading whenever I came near and plucked a book off a nearby shelf. And at restaurants like this, they would sit less than ten feet away from me and look through me as if I were as transparent as glass.

It was enough to make a man wonder about his own sanity. Had someone slipped me a pill to make me invisible to women everywhere?

Once, I brought up the subject with one of my female friends (who happened to be single and available, but brushed off my attempts to date her). I thought I was a good man. Women supposedly wanted to meet good men. So why did they ignore me?

"Women get tired of being hit on by every man on the street," she said. "They play like they don't see you because they worry that the instant they make eye contact with you, you'll blab out something ignorant and disrespectful."

"Understood," I said. "I know that women catch hell from the rude brothers out there. But why brush me off when I step to them correctly? Why do they have to give me the cold shoulder when I say hello and try to start a friendly conversation?"

"Maybe the girl was having a bad day. It might not have anything to do with you."

"Lots of women out there must be having bad days, then."

"You don't know how it feels to be a woman, taking abuse from men daily."

"I sure don't, but I still want to meet one."

"Be patient. You'll find someone who's right for you."

The conversations always concluded with that meaningless response that I tired of hearing. I'll find someone who's right for me, I only had to be patient. But how could I catch anyone's attention if I was evidently invisible?

I've developed a theory, and it has nothing to do with me waiting on a fantasy girl to arrive and save me from bachelorhood. My theory is: Many women don't find good men because they don’t know what good men look like. The good men truly are invisible to them. It explained my problem.

The good men don't always hold prestigious jobs that confer fat paychecks. We might not drive a late-model Lexus. We don't always wear designer clothing and platinum jewelry. We might not have graduated from the most popular college, probably don't live in the plushest condo in the city, may not have six-pack abs, might have vacationed in Miami instead of Milan, and probably don't spend our weekends with the hottest social set in town.

However, the men who lead these charmed, high-profile lives seem to get noticed by women. I've heard women proudly tell their friends that they date an attorney. I've seen women sprain their necks to check out the brother in the shiny Lexus. My female friends have boasted about how their new boyfriend is a good friend of so-and-so (fill in name of pro athlete or recording star), and dresses in designer pajamas. No, these brothers definitely aren't invisible to the ladies.

A genuinely good man can certainly enjoy a prosperous lifestyle--but he's just as likely to be rather ordinary, too. Plain, even. Like the old car you drove back in the day that, in spite of its dull outward appearance, always started up on a cold morning and got you to work on time. The paint job wasn't eye-catching, but the engine under the hood was pure gold.

Look under the hood of a good man, and you'll find a slew of wonderfully functioning parts: honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, kindness, love of family, humility--critical pieces that can be found in a good man's system, fitted together and performing in well-oiled silence.

You'll often find such a good man engaged in commonplace activities. You'll discover us in the café at your local bookstore, perusing literature. We sit at the desk beside you in night school, quietly tending to our classwork. We're in the row in front of you at the theater as you take in a Saturday matinee. We keep a low-profile, because we've learned the hard way that you simply don't see us. We've spent years working in vain to get your attention. You just seem so apt to notice the loud, flashy men who spend money to impress, talk good game, and eventually drop you to move on to the next woman, leaving you to ask your girlfriends if you'll ever meet a really nice guy.

Yes, the ordinariness of good men has rendered us invisible to the very women who claim to desire our company. We have to either spend a long time waiting on a perceptive woman to blink and finally realize our presence, or we decide to remake ourselves into one of the glamorous men that hog all of the attention. The latter option sometimes looks quite attractive--I sometimes find myself calculating exactly what it would take for me to lease a Lexus. Fortunately, my thoughts invariably return to saner shores.

I'll continue to wait. I'll continue to sit at the table beside you at your favorite restaurant. I'll continue to hope that, one day, you'll look up and see me smiling at you . . . and you'll smile back.

Brandon Massey is an author currently living in Georgia. His horror novel, Thunderland, is available at Amazon.com and an excerpt is also featured at his website www.brandonmassey.com

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