I don’t know if you’ve seen this article in the February issue of Essence magazine—the one with Lauryn Hill on the cover. If you haven’t, I’ve provided it below. It is one of the most explosive, oh-you-wanna-start-some-shit-dontcha pieces I’ve read in a very long time.

It’s written by NAACP Image Award winning/bestselling author Omar Tyree, who’s not exactly known for being either shy or conservative. Omar is a firebrand, a self-proclaimed cultural griot who relishes contention and is quick to speak his mind and tell you the way he thinks things should be.

I know Omar, so this isn’t a personal dig at him, and I’ve never met his wife. For all I know, she could have cheered him on as he wrote this article (although I find that incredibly hard to believe, as she appears to be the intended target). This post is more about me wondering how I would respond if my man wrote an article about not exactly having his exceptionally intense male needs met, and then said article appeared in the most widely read magazine among African-American women. (I’m assuming Essence is tops in that category, but don’t quote me. It could be O Magazine or something else for all I know. Any way you slice it, a helluva lotta people read Essence. Period.)

Here’s just a hint of what Omar said (words in bold are my emphasis):

Active men have always had extra mojo in their tanks, more than the average woman could keep up with. We are the barely-ever-sleeping, early-rising overachievers who have been spoiled by our own history of success, and, quite honestly, we love being rewarded for it. Now I understand that we can’t always have what we want when we want it, but a hardworking man expects to receive as much as he gives. […] So the question becomes, if his wife has run out of her initial fire, how willing is that man to live without it? After a while, if that one woman continues to keep her man malnourished, it is incredibly hard for him to say no to the hundreds of other women who are more than ready to feed him what he needs.

I don’t know about y’all, but if my man wrote something like this in a major magazine, all his shit—books, clothes, computers, jewelry, coats, shoes, music, manuscripts, pictures, pomade, doo-rags—would be on fire in the driveway when he returned, and I’m not a violent, knee-jerk kinda girl. Notice I didn’t say “when he came home,” because he wouldn’t have a home anymore. Not with me. There’d be a gilded greasy spot in the driveway (melted jewelry, pomade, and all) marking where he made his last stand.

I’m just saying.

I’m all for servicing and being serviced and not taking each other’s sexual needs for granted, even if there seems to be a marked disparity in the intensity of our drives, but I wouldn’t want to be put on blast about it, nor would I publicly call my man out. Unless I was throwing down a gimme-more-dick-or-else gauntlet for real. You can’t take this kind of stuff back. This is both a threat and an invitation. (To the wife and the groupies, respectively.)

Anyway, here’s the article. You be the judge. Click the image once to enlarge it, then once it opens on another page, click it one more time to enlarge it again so that it will be large enough to read.

Happy reading. Keep in mind this is the kind of stuff that makes you slap your man for no reason. Just for what he might be thinking. Your man may be nothing like Omar. In fact, I’d be willing to bet Omar would tell you himself there’s not another man as alpha as he is walking the earth.

And in the words of Martha Stewart, that’s a good thing.