Originally posted on August 18, 2008
This week will be jammed-pack with interesting social engagements. I have two very important weekday birthday parties and then, whatever the weekend has in store for me. Tonight, weather permitting, I'm going to a birthday party hosted by a very good friend of mine. In fact, he was my very first boyfriend. We first met in college but didn't really date until after a few years of "talking". I still remember the day we met like it was yesterday. I was in the school bookstore to pick up supplies for a class. I do not exaggerate when I tell you, that day, I looked like a holy hot mess dragged in by wolves. I really had no business going out of my dorm room looking that rough. Still, he quietly says something to me while peeking over the next book aisle. He says; "Don't look so somber." I don't know why but that comment intrigued me, even though I knew it was just a pick-up line. (I'm usually immune to pick-up lines.) Actually, I was going to an art college across the street from the university he attended but I frequently used their bookstore because of the vast selection of art supplies, plus it was in walking distance and I didn't have a car. After that day, we talked on the phone a bit, hung out a bit and kicked it a bit. But for all those months, he never tried to so much as kiss me. Not even when I was alone with him in his dorm room, me on his bed and he at his desk. (Good thing too, I was a tender virgin at the time.) His 'inaction' was even more puzzling when I found out much later that he had quite a reputation on campus as being a…how can I put this without calling him a hoe?!...um…uh…screw it…he was a hoe! One of my best girlfriends from my college years (who is still one of my best friends today) told me a hilarious story of him "kicking it" with two girls in her apartment building on the same day, on two different floors (before I met him). He would spend a couple of hours with one, then a couple of hours with the other and neither knew about the other. In between, he would stop at our mutual girlfriend's place (probably to rest). Now you have to give to him, that's the epitome of a ' Mack Daddy'. Anyway, we lost touch for a couple of years but then reconnected when he happened to see me in the play 'For Colored Girls Only' on the university's campus (I was the Lady in Red). By that time, I was going to school there after graduating from the art college-and he was no longer going to the university. After the play, he invited himself to our celebratory night out and that's when we really connected, with a passionate kiss, smack-dab in the middle of the dance floor. (My sister still says she wishes she could erase that image from her brain-but she loves him to death.) We were pretty inseparable for several months after that but it was a very PG-13 relationship. To skip to the middle, he was my first (eventually) and I had no doubt that he loved me very much. Life circumstances periodically pulled us apart, sometimes for several years but then somehow, we'd find each other again. Sometimes we tried at romance, sometimes we didn't. We haven't been linked romantically for quite some time now but each time, no matter how long the separation, we'd come together as the very best of friends. On one of our reconnections, I asked him why he never tried anything sorted with me for all those years in college, when he had such a 'checkered' reputation. He simply replied to me that there are women you do that kind of stuff with, and then there's me, a classy person (not just woman) that deserved nothing but the upmost respect. Good Answer! He was the very first man that I loved like that. He's always been appreciative of my unique eccentricities & weirdness (he didn't think I was a certified nutcase). He was never scared away by my bad moods or razor-sharp words (I was 100 times worse back then-he can tell you I'd probably cussed him out dozens of times). He seemed to always see the bigger picture which was, he didn't know anyone else like me, he wanted me in his life and that there would invariably be rough patches along the way. No matter how I looked physically, he always made me feel like the most gorgeous woman in the entire world and the effects of that, contribute greatly to my rather healthy self-esteem today. How many people can say that they are still the best of friends with the person they lost their virginity to? Not many I'd imagine. Honestly, he had quite a lot to do with positively shaping the woman I've become and that makes him a very special person to me. He reminds me that there will always be somebody out there that loves and appreciates me for better or worse. This entry is really a birthday present to him, a dedication that hopefully lets him know just how much he means, and has always meant, to me. No matter what curve balls life throws our way, I know he'll always be in my life and I find great comfort in that. There is nobody on earth quite like him and I'm so glad he found me on that fateful day. I say to him with much love and respect; Happy Birthday B! Thanks for being who you are, for being my dear friend and for finding me.
No comments:
Post a Comment