Romance..

Lately I've been thinking a lot about romance. With Stewart's most recent Latin adventure and the rash of weddings that I've attended over the last year, I can't avoid it. (Over the past year or so I've been a groomsman for three of my closest friends, and have attended probably a dozen other weddings in various parts of the country.) Given my age, it's not really that unusual I guess. But I can't help but wonder why it is that I haven't gotten to that point in my own life.

Now, most of you would probably say that I need to look no further than my own blog for the explanation. (Who in their right mind would want to marry a guy that barely finished High School, took seven years to graduate college and is a self-proclaimed under-achiever?) But I think there's more to it than that.

I'd like to think that I'm a pretty fun person to be around. I mean sure, I like to have a drink or twelve every now and again(Who doesn't?), but it's not something that I consider an issue. Hell, I've even been engaged before! (Given, I was 19 at the time and the girl turned out to be more of a solid drinking partner than a soul-mate. But it was an engagement, nonetheless.) I've never really had a problem getting dates, but I've only had a handful of what I would consider "serious" relationships.

Keisha:

I was six years old and she was seven, and at the time I went to a public school in Gadsden that was about 99% African American (The one percent was made up of myself, my brother and a healthy little Latino girl that moved away after the first grade). Keisha and I held hands on the playground, laid side by side at nap time and rode the bus home from school together (We lived on the same street).

Everything was moving along quite nicely until one day on the bus, all of the older kids started chanting "Brass Honkey". (This was right around the time that the Beastie Boys song "Brass Monkey" hit the airways, so it was really a pretty easy remix.) I tried to play it off like they weren't talking to me. But in hindsight, since I was the only white kid on the bus, that was a pretty lame defense strategy. It wasn't long before Keisha stopped holding my hand on the playground, stopped taking naps beside me and stopped sitting with me on the bus.


When I was eight, I left the city and moved out to the country. This meant that I now had the option of attending the city school system or the (predominately Caucasian) county school system. This is North Alabama's own little way of hanging on to segregation. You see, In most other parts of the state, parents would have to pay thousands of dollars a year to send their children to private schools in order to guarantee they have a safe and productive learning environment. Well, in North Alabama, if you live within the city limits, you're required to attend a city school. If you live outside the city limits, you have the option of attending a city school OR a county school.

Well, as you might imagine, the overwhelming majority of African Americans lived within the city limits (i.e. public housing, low income housing, apartments, etc...). This meant that the county school systems we're made up of mostly Caucasians. Of course, I wasn't aware of this at the time but now that I look at it, it's a pretty sneaky little trick. The county school system is where I met my next girlfriend.

Amanda:

Amanda came into the picture when I was in the third grade, but we didn't start "going" together until the fifth grade. Our relationship was pretty solid. We both liked the same music (Randy Travis, Hank Jr., etc...), we shared many of the same values and we both we're about as stubborn as they come. (The "stubborn" part of my personality will be a recurring theme in this post.)

Ultimately, the demise of our relationship lays on my shoulders. You see, for Christmas one year I bought Amanda a necklace. It was a nice little gold chain with a clear, heart shaped pendant attached to it with the letter A carved into the center. I told her it was a real diamond. She obviously new that it wasn't.

Nevermind the fact that I had bought the necklace at the jewelry counter at K-mart, or the fact that, had it been real, it would have cost approximately $3 million dollars. I told her it was real, and I was sticking to my story. Even when another girl at our school came in wearing the exact same necklace, (and openly admitted to purchasing it at K-mart) I wouldn't budge.

Eventually, I think Amanda grew tired of the game. So, she dumped me.

(In my defense, if I had $3 Million dollars, I would have bought her a real one.)

Fast forward through Middle School, where the scene was way too intense to be thinking about a girlfriend. (I would equate the pressure and social anxiety that I experienced in Middle School to what, I imagine, it would have felt like to be standing in the exact three foot area of downtown Hiroshima that the atomic bomb landed on.)

Once I reached High school, things started to level out. I had actually started to realize a little bit about who I was as a person and I worried a little less about what other people thought about that person. That was when I got involved in my first "Grown Up" relationship.

Jill:

I was 16 and she was 15. Jill was the most beautiful girl I had ever talked to, much less dated. Obviously, the fact that I was older than her and owned a car had a serious influence on her willingness to date me. Jill and I dated for quite a while, almost two years, I think. We had a very volatile relationship. In other words, we fought a lot. That's not that unusual for kids our age, but it starts to wear on you after a while. One day, I was at work and I just decided to break up with her.

I was going into the summer before my senior year and the last thing I wanted was a girlfriend to fight with all summer long. I called her up, and picked a fight with her for no reason. For the record, this is the meanest thing I've ever done to another person in my life. The fight was totally bogus and I don't even remember what it was about. It lasted about an hour and then I broke up with her. She begged me to get back together for about a month and I wouldn't give her the time of day. That is, until I found out that she was dating one of my older brothers friends, and I begged her to take me back for the next two months....she didn't.

I was single for about a year after that, and it was great. This year included several trips to Panama City Beach, and a countless number of High School, House Party, make-out sessions that ended at 11:30 (Because I had to be home by Midnight). After graduation we all headed to Panama City Beach for senior week. That's where things really started to heat up between me and my future "EX-fiance'".

Hillary:

Hillary and I met in Gadsden. Her younger sister was dating one of my best friends and we all went to a party together. We hit it off from the start, mainly because she was running at about the same speed as I was at the time. By that, I mean we were both heavily involved in multiple social scenes and there was never a dull moment. We had a blast all summer, on the river, at the beach, camping in the mountains and kicking it by the pool.

The fall came and it was time for her to move to Auburn. I was staying in Gadsden for a year because I had a really good summer job and I wasn't quite ready to give it up yet. I also wanted to take a few of my core classes as Gadsden State (AKA: Harvard on the Hill).

We made it through her first semester, and got engaged over the Christmas break. We had started to fight here and there but for the most part, things were good....until she moved home for the summer.

When she came home for the summer, it was all downhill. We fought like crazy, night and day, no matter what the situation. We couldn't get in the car to go the grocery without having an all out yelling match. We struggled our way through the entire summer and that fall I moved to Auburn. Our relationship lasted about a week after that. I didn't see or talk to her, in Auburn or Gadsden, for the next three years.

The next three years are basically a blur. As I've mentioned before, I was in, what my mom likes to call, my "experimental" stage. I was way more interested in Band Parties, Keg Parties, House Parties, Block Parties, Tailgate Parties, Road Trips, and Drugs to worry about a serious girlfriend. I did date a girl off and on during this period, but we never really labeled ourselves as "Boyfriend and Girlfriend". For that reason, she will be spared from this list.

One night I had hopped the fence from the Sigma Nu house to go see some friends of mine that were Sigma Chi's. It was at the Sigma Chi house that night, that I met my next long term girlfriend.

Hillary "The 2nd Time":

That's right. For the first time in three years, Hillary and I were standing face to face. Surprisingly, it wasn't as awkward as you might think. Most of the people there were from the same social circle that we had been so heavily involved in when we first met. We started talking, and before you know it we were back at her house and back into a serious relationship.

We dated for about a year and things were good. I was pretty sure I was going to marry her, but I was determined not to rush it. We weren't quite as crazy as we were the first time, but we still maintained a pretty fast pace. She was getting ready to graduate, and she took a job in Atlanta. I was nowhere near graduating.

After she moved to Atlanta, it started to slip again. She was having a really hard time adjusting to life in the real world and I definitely couldn't relate. Most of the time, I was trying to get off the phone with her so I could go to drink specials at Bodega's, get bombed and sleep until eleven the next day.

It wasn't long before she got tired of her new job, tired of Atlanta and tired of me. It was mutual. By mutual I mean, she broke up with me and after about two weeks I realized that it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me. I don't mean that as an insult to Hillary. We are just two very different people who were on two very different wavelengths.

For the last three years I haven't dated anyone seriously. I graduated college and took a job in Baton Rouge. After about a year, I was transferred to Montgomery. After a little over a year there, I was transferred to Atlanta. I have wanted to concentrate on my career and I just didn't have time to get involved with someone.

Once I got settled in Atlanta, I began to open myself up to the idea of getting back into a relationship. I wasn't actively looking for one, but I wasn't totally against the idea either. That's when I met my current girlfriend. I'm not going to mention her name, because I'm not sure how she would react. She's said, on more than one occasion, that she doesn't mind, but I don't want to chance it. Mainly because I like her... a lot.

This is the method I'm using to win her over....