Robin Thicke Conjures a Memory Regarding This One Time a Boy Named Duge Asked Me Out

My internet has been off for two weeks because I am poor, so this morning I've been bingeing on internet gossip to make up for all the time lost. I tend to skim Jezebel.com since it purports to be feminist but in reality is just about as feminist as pink and violet Lady Bic razors. But yeah I still read that mess and so it was that I came across an article -- well, "article" is perhaps to strong a word to use about anything that is Gawker Media -- trying to make meaning of the spectacle Robin Thicke made of himself at the BET Awards soul-moaning on-stage in his much publicized bid to win back his wife Paula who put his skeezy ass out for the ho-ish disrespect of her and cheating ways.

I am not a fan of Robin Thicke and never have been. Even though he's been receiving a lot of limelight in the past two summers when he hosted on the one-season long musical duel "Duets" and then the explosion of "Blurred Lines" last year. Lots of people (whom I don't know) swear that he's actually a fairly decent musician but I'm just totally skeeved out and I cannot explain it...until this morning as I was reading through Gawker's typically mean-spirited comments section which triggered a memory twenty years old and buried deep in my psyche.

Robin Thicke reminds me of a white boy I went to high school with whose name was Duge. Yes it is spelled like DOOGE but pronounced like DUG. In every high school in every land upon the planet Earth there is a boy or girl so nerdy and odd that even the odd-ball nerds look askance at him/her. Duge was that boy. For fully three years of high school Duge was mostly silent and I can't really remember him speaking out in class. 

During school-wide convocations where honors were announced each semester or special presentations given to help students deal with the death of someone from our community, everyone from my year yelled DOOGE! simultaneously when Duge's name was called. He always took it in stride though.

Quiet as he was I should never have thought of him again in life except for a very stand-out event Senior year when Duge walked up to me in the hall and asked me out. 

You must understand that in the posh overwhelmingly white prep school I attended in the early 90s it was not the done thing to date interracially. There were nine black students out of about 120 in my class. We, all of us, simply dated black people from other high schools. Now it was known that I had spent all of Freshman year quite close enough to a particular whiteboy, enough so that even though we were never officially dating, still my friends alerted me that we were considered "together". Apparently Duge had been checking up on me.

I had to take a huge amount of courage for Duge to ask me out and I wish I could say that I considered this and acted with kindness and friendship though I was uninterested, however it would be a lie for me to say so. I was freaking horrified. 

Duge was tall and gangly with hair that was limp and greasy and of no particular color. Also his underarms stank. You didn't have to be up close to him but a little ways to catch a whiff of oniony-funk that trapped itself in the nose for quite a bit longer than seemed at all normal for average underarm funk. He was pale and sweaty and anemic looking. Nobody really knew much about Duge; he didn't seem to have any friends. He was easy to overlook that way.

But one thing was for sure: by Senior year Duge had a hardcore crush on black chicks. I don't even know what I said to him; maybe he asked for my number? or asked me out to a movie? I had broken up with my black boyfriend who was also my cotillion escort Junior year, so I wasn't able to use "My boyfriend won't like it as an excuse". 

All I know is that I wasn't brave or compassionate. I swept the surrounding lockers with panicky eyes worried at who would see me talking to Duge only to realize I was busted: two of my best girlfriends were near enough to hear the entire exchange. The witnesses skittered away quickly to spread the scandalous account which had traveled far and wide across the school by the time I entered the lunch room at fifth period. The laughter began before I could even sit down. I bent my head and tried to eat my chicken fried steak sandwich with dignity.

Duge took the rejection with stoicism. I, however, was teased and mocked unmercifully. "Hey!! Hey!! Guess who like Trixie?! DUGE! DUGE ASKED HER OUT!!" Oh it was all fun and games and laughing until about a week later he approached on of my other friends. There were only four black girls in our year. It appeared he was just going to run down the list until someone said yes!!

It was my turn to laugh now as we sat terrified at who he would pick next. Right or wrong (and I'm sure there is a heap of wrong in this pettiness to avoid Duge) nobody was tryna date stinky-underarm-Duge. And, he did indeed ask each of us in turn ....except for Jada who was known to be mean spirited and brave Duge must have had enough of rejection by that time.

One thing was for sure though: Duge was hungry for some chocolate. 

Looking at the lyrics to Robin Thicke's take-me-back breakup album brought stinky armed Duge rushing back into my pysche. Robin Thicke's favorite topic of conversation is his wife's blackness and ridiculous as he comes off in my eyes there can be little doubt that he loves his wife. (Though he shoulda been thinking about that before he decided to cheat...)

In conclusion, I cannot explain why reading about Robin Thicke conjured the

noisome memory of Duge but somehow, somewhere there is a connection; perhaps someday I shall discover the key to the mystery. This is not to suggest that Robin Thicke has stinky underarms or that perhaps somehow Duge has morphed into Thicke all these many years later.  

Indeed, I would refuse a date from Robin Thicke with as much paranoia and nervous skittering to be unseen and maybe therein lies all that there is to say about the curious intersection between two whiteboys cracked out  by Chocolate Fever.