“I’ll call him at noon tomorrow,” I said.
I think I like coming up with specific dates and times when it can give me the illusion of control. Otherwise I hate it. The gravity of the situation caused me to have an unusual amount of precaution that actually ended up serving me. 29 years old, never seen, smelled or otherwise sensed a major relationship, never really known mutual attraction, and decidedly in a “fuck it” phase of life. I knew I could not afford naivete. I was confident that he would end up being like every other dead end, preventing me from being completely irresponsible. He would inevitably say something stupid. 22 years old, no degree, lives in the projects. The odds were in my favor. I called him at 12:08. No answer. I left a voice mail, with my number.
At first I was annoyed, because it meant I would have to wait. Til when? God only knows. Guys tend to have a strange concept of time that stretches along a plane governed by boredom or horniness. And he was 22, so. The outlook wasn’t good. I busied myself in the kitchen when I got the funny suspicion that he’d called me while I was away from my phone, which is always on vibrate. And sure enough he had. There was a voice mail. ”Uh, yeah this is Axel…” He called me back on a different number. Sketchy, my female intuition said. I called the number back, it was the rec center. He was in the computer lab, still looking up scholarships and grants. Oh yeah, I forgot, he’s poor and also an adolescent. ”He’ll call you right back,” the lady said. I left my phone in the kitchen where I knew I’d hear it buzz on any of the surfaces, but somewhere along the way it ended up in the living room on top of a very soft Bible. ”No!” I thought. If there’s another missed call…
Lo and behold, he’d called me again. One minute earlier. What am I doing? I thought. Where can this possibly go? It was a familiar feeling. I hadn’t even gotten started and I was already weary. The phone tag was an omen to me. I refuse to lie in wait for a 22 year old to call me. Have I sunk to the depths? Why did I want to do this again? Just as I was about to write the whole thing off the phone buzzed in my hand. It was him again. I laughed at myself. See that, worry wart? I thought. Then I thought, Hm, he called me right back even though I didn’t answer. I thought I was the only one that did that. Doesn’t he know that’s stalkery? I answered and he was like, “I’m not trying to be a stalker or whatever, I just like to call people right back to make sure I don’t miss them,” or something like that. ”It’s cool,” I simply said. We made plans to talk after I got off work with the possibility of meeting up some place. I was still adamant about not getting excited. It was virtually impossible for me to do, actually. My only hope was to be able to see this through to the moment he shows his ass so I can go back to my life with assurance.
Right after work I waited around the customary 30 minutes before calling. Didn’t want to seem too eager. Didn’t want to seem eager at all. I called him around 8:30 and to my surprise, we actually talked. Can’t remember all about, the customary introductory talk that one has with a prospect. We had a few things in common here and there, enough to make me think he’d be a decent guy to be around. He said just about all the right things a guy would need to say to me, which was intriguing b/c I was almost certain he would have no idea what those things were.
“Oh, and I have three kids,” he blurted out.
“I know, you showed me pictures,” I said.
“Oh yeah. And you know I’m on parole right?” he said.
“Yeah, you told me that too,” I said.
He told me as many ugly things as he could tell me and said, “I just don’t want there to be any surprises later, b/c I want you to know as much as possible before we get into anything.” I really respected that. It was something I knew I would never have the courage to do. Not having a record, not having any major setback I’d have to discuss in depth on a government form, I have the luxury of keeping my secrets until it’s too late. But here’s this guy, who no doubt gets pre-judged wherever he goes, at such a place in life that it forces him to be better if he wants to be. And apparently he wanted to be. There were the don’t-judge-a-book type things, like about him wanting to be a pediatric nurse and how he’s at his happiest when he’s helping someone else. And he said the customary cute things like, “I mean, I can’t even believe you even called me” and “I’m really nervous talking to you so my words aren’t coming out right” and all that.
That night my brain was going in all different directions so I couldn’t sleep. But it wasn’t the kind I was expecting, the kind that I’d experienced before where you’re just on this high b/c there’s a person suddenly in your life. It was more like he was this project. I was going to help him! So many resources that he didn’t know about and blah blah blah. About God. He said he believed in God but not in the Bible. Said he has God’s love tattooed on his inner arms so that every time he hugs someone they get God’s love. The notion was quaint, it was all very “Dangerous Minds.” I thought, “now I understand why this person is in my path. God wants me to help him. He knows that I won’t judge him, and maybe he’ll help me too in some way.” Maybe, just maybe!
So that night I was all high on my missionary vibes, either not knowing or just ignoring the fact that he’d passed preliminaries and seemed like my type of dude. I knew at the very least we’d be able to hang out with each other for an hour or two without getting bored, so perhaps I’d have my date after all. The next day was my day off, so he said he’d call me tomorrow after he’d finished his appointment up at the school. I thought it would be good if we could get together and maybe work some more on that financial aid stuff he was trying to do. It was clear to me needed to have a better idea of his options. ”He’d be sooo good as a CASA volunteer. Oh my gosh, he should do blah blah blah…!” After a few hours I managed to calm my mind down but I didn’t get much sleep.
The next day I went to work out for the first time in weeks. Not only was I suddenly feeling fat I just needed to get my mind off of the day and not go into crazy cray cray mode. I didn’t feel like I would but that’s when it creeps up on you. See once I find a guy that I want to love then that’s the end of it. Done. The decree has gone out. It’s like voodoo. I have to be careful which direction I look into, how and why. It’s probably the reason why I end up liking guys that don’t like me back so often. I wanted to be able to pick the dude. I had this idea that guys can just capture you, which is kind of true, but I didn’t trust the process. I wanted to be captured by a guy that I first had to know, or at least think, was worthy. And then I’d be like “okay, here I am, capture me!” and they’d be like, “um, hey can you move?”
So anyways, he called me, and I went to his place to pick him up. Actually, I thought I was just going to meet him over there and we would hang out, but he got in my car and said, “so where we going?” I said, “where do you want to go?” When I was driving up I said to myself, “maybe he’s not as cute as you remember.” Much to my chagrin he was cuter. I could tell he was dressing for the occasion, and any tats that could be covered were. At once he was fiddling with my makeshift ipod which was my phone at the time. I’d found a remnant of songs that’d escaped my entertainment holocaust and had been listening to those. ”You got any rap on here?” He found “A Milli” and started blaring it. A couple old school jams came on and I gave him a few quick jabs about his age, to which he immediately showed his distaste. ”I hope it’s not going to be like that the whole time.” I assured him it wasn’t. But it was really hard not to see those differences, and to not immediately point those differences out. He was introducing me to new slang words for heaven’s sake, which could’ve been an issue of social circle, but anytime you’ve gotta ask a 22 year old the meaning of a term and how to use it in context, it generally means you’re old.
I started driving around downtown, thinking we could find a quiet spot to just chill, but I didn’t have a definitive plan yet. ”Wanna walk around the mall?” he asked. The baby rattles went off in my head again. What am I, twelve? I thought for a moment. But then it dawned on me that it had been an exaggerated amount of time since I’d walked around in a mall, and Green Hills was the closest one to us. The thought of our broke asses walking around in Green Hills mall gave me a queer sense of glee, and I could tell it was the same for him. Never thought I’d meet a man, nay another person, with the same penchant for cheap, obscure fun. Immediately after having that thought he announced, “I don’t have a lot of money but I know how to have fun.” It was a declaration, a precedent about how things would probably be with him. I didn’t mind it. A loaded guy would be nice, let the ladies say “amen,” but having experienced that to a degree it’s not enough. And cheap fun is what I grew up on and what I adore. I’ve spent so many words on the matter b/c it really is a key that fits some doors in my heart. ”Cheap fun” is not itself the key, it’s the flower on a greater branch that I would go into but these things keep getting so freaking long. Hate to end in medias res but it’s a miracle I’ve got as much done as I have. Boyfriends seriously cut into my free time. Go fig.
End of part 2
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