Personal Experiences

My Mentor and Me

In 2016, I was part of this program in college. The program was for young black men to connect with older (wise) black men. It was made to make us young men understand how to continue to be successful and prosper in the world. The program was definitely a great contribution to my life.

So I went to the program one particular day with my homeboys, Lock and French. Those are their nicknames and yes they are cool with being part of my story. They were part of the program as well. I went to meet me my mentor, we will call him Dennis. He was a good looking black man. He was always dressing suave and fresh. Lock and French hated that I had the cool mentor. He would buy me stuff for my dorm. He invited me over to watch the game. He even introduced me to his boss at a company he worked and put in a good word for me. It was a black owned company. I was glad to have met my mentor.

Now y'all probably like this sounds too good to be true. Yeah, to me it was too. Well I started to grow an attraction to him and couldn't stop thinking about him. One day, I went over to his house do he could help me out with a project I was working on. I pull up and see that he had a driveway with four cars. Now, he own two of them, but the other two were new to me. I was like I know this man didn't buy me no car. I wouldn't accept it....at first. Lol!

I walked up to the door and rang the door bell. Then, a young man around my age answered the door. I was shocked like who is this?

"Hello, is Mr. Dennis home?" I asked.
"Oh, yeah, you must be the dude my dad talked about?" He said.

Your dad? I was completed shock because I didn't know my mentor had a family. He did mentioned that he got a divorced a few years back, but not a full on family.

"Uh, yeah, I'm James."
"Cool. I'm Kenard. Nice to meet you. Come in." Kenard said letting me in.
"Dad, James is here!"
"Alright, send him to my office!" Mr. Dennis shouted from the other side of the room.

I walked to the office and he was in there looking stressed. He had paper all over his desk and erasing numbers on a sheet. I put my stuff down and sat in the chair. He looked up at me and said,

"I'm sorry for the chaos. My family came over for the weekend and these numbers are not adding up for this event next weekend. Do you mind getting started and I will come help you in a few?"
"Yea. No problem." I got up and went to the office table to get started.

I heard him ball up some paper and threw it on the ground. I saw it roll over to me and I picked it up. I looked over his work and noticed the error. I hated math, but it comes to me easily if I sit a while with it. I corrected the mistake and handed to him. He stared at it for a minute and smiled.

"Well I'll be damn. You really are something else! Thank you!" Mr. Dennis said giving me a dap. We did our handshake and he came over to help me with my project.

We finished around 7:30pm and I needed to head back to my dorm. So, I started to pack up my stuff when his son, Kenard, stepped in. He asked if I wanted to take some food back with me to school. Well I'm not gonna stop anyone that wants to give me free food. I accepted and made four plates of everything. They didn't mind. I got to meet Mr. Dennis two sons and ex-wife. She seemed nice and I could see what he saw in her. She had a beauty that stood bright and loud from across the room. Though, she had a snappy tongue. She tried to tell her son not to associate with me. Like my grandma always say, "Roses are always pretty until you get stuck by it's thorns." And she was talking about her.

I got in my car and Mr. Dennis helped me load my car with my stuff. As I was getting something straightened in my car, I could've sworn I heard that Jack'd notification sound. Now, I knew it wasn't mine because I put my notifications on mute when I got to his place. So, it had to be him. I ignored it like he did and got in my car. As I was pulling off, I went around the corner to find him on Jack'd. If I'm still in the area, that's he should still be there, right? Boom! There he is! I could tell from that bow tie he was wearing in the picture. No face, but clothing. Everything that his status said is what he looked liked. I was hesitant at first to hit him up. Then, I said fuck it! Just do it! I sent the message and drove off.