Tick Tock

It’s been said that “time waits for no man” and in the words of my idol, Joss Stone, when faced with the same statement in her song “4 and 20” had this to say: “And neither does this woman”. Just some words I recently decided to live by. Yes, it looked like it was time for me to do the unthinkable: date. I was never one to wait for a man and that now included Father Time.  

            As a war veteran on the battlefield of love, I had seen it all: great boyfriends, not so great ones, creepy admirers, potential bachelors and the ones that got away, but I guess none of those really seemed to stick. I was beginning to feel like Teflon for men. I might have had a hand in it too, but for the most part there was just no zsa zsa zoo. When you live in an area where it’s heavy with either naïve teens fresh from the rainbow or the dreaded “down low” guys, sometimes you are lost somewhere in the middle. I was at a point in my life where I believed I was still young enough to be a viable commodity, but old enough to know that I can’t be out all night like I used to and still wake up like I had a full eight hours worth of sleep. What I needed was an adult relationship.

Where were the men like me? Was there a weekly group where they all met to empathize with each other that I wasn’t privy to? Or were they doing the same thing I was? Working day after a day with little to no energy afterwards to even work up the confidence it takes to approach another man? And even then, what does one say when he finds someone else that he’s attracted to? “Hey, what hair product do you use?” I can barely make small talk with some of my closest friends much less a complete stranger. In the past year the closest example I’ve come to meeting new men was when a guy I had waited on left his number on a napkin with the line “call me maybe?” written on the bottom. I recall not being able to make eye contact with him because of his leading man good looks and there might have been a moment when I blushed just by doing so, but 1. I didn’t even think he was gay and 2. I was a tired, shiny, poofy-haired mess when I waited on him that night. How was I supposed to know that was his type? What did I do with his number you ask? Well, thinking it was some joke I folded it up, put it in my pocket and never called him. Simple as that.

I might have overreacted on that one. He was a really nice guy, good looking and even drove a beat up old car which that didn’t start which made me think he wasn’t too full of himself. He could’ve been perfect. I think that old saying “Satan in a Sunday hat” got the best of me, that and a case of low self esteem.

But that was then and this was now, dammit! I have a lot more confidence than I did back then and even though I’m a little clumsy with it, it’s there; I just wish I knew how to use it. Yes, it would seem that the plan I had made for myself would bring forth great things.

I was sitting in my counselor’s waiting room (court mandated. Long story.) when I came across an article that explained that SINGLE men were at a higher risk for a heart attack or stroke than men in relationships. That didn’t shake me; I knew I was golden (and healthy enough). But then I read another article that explained that OPTIMIST were more likely to have health problems later down the road than that of any other people. That’s when I started to get nervous. Not only was I single but I also considered myself an optimist who believed in things like love. How else was I supposed to take that information? I was faced with the dilemma: was I going to die of a defected heart?  

 Was being a romantic and an optimist actually hurting me than helping me? Was it going be all that I left behind in this life? Had everything that I stood up for meant nothing but dust in the wind? I needed professional help. What I needed was a tarot card reading.

It was a Wednesday night at the Lady of Hutton’s household a.k.a. my friend’s Erin and Stacey’s house when the head of the household, Ms. Patty a.k.a. their mother wanted to read tarot cards. I had known Ms. Patty and her daughters for some time now and they had to be the most welcoming and warmest group of people I had ever met. Ms. Patty asked me to put my essence on the cards so I shuffled them and even waved them around my aura just for good measure. The first card would represent my recent past, the second would represent my current present and the third would foretell my upcoming future. Call me superstitious, but I had my fingers crossed in hopes that the fates would be kind. I ended up drawing The Sun, Courage and Strength, (hey, not too shabby for my first tarot card reading, huh?). Ms. Patty went on to tell me that my recent past had been a rough one but that there was a lot of positive energy coming my way that would flow into my current present and carry on into my future. She also mentioned that my charms would come in handy in the romance department. I could only hope that those charms would come with an instruction manual, too.

So maybe I had it all wrong. When we let silly things like health articles or save the date cards dictate how we should spend our lives we can get a little off balance. I had scared myself into believing that just because I wasn’t in a relationship that something was wrong with me, and more importantly, my heart. No matter how loud I think my biological clock is ticking I decided that it was time to take my heart off the shelf and put it back in its rightful place, on my sleeve. Maybe in times of crisis when we think that all hope is lost, the best thing to do is come back to the middle. After all, you only live once, right?

Great Things

            It was Sunday night just like any other with the girls: happy hour beers and cosmopolitans. It’s was a rarity that Joy, Michael, Maritza and I could get together for some much needed friend time. We had gathered tonight to play catch-up and discuss the possibilities of the future. They say that life is what happens when you’re waiting for a table, but sometimes life is what happens while you’re sitting at it.

            Joy and I slid into one side of the booth while Maritza and Michael sat opposite of us. Joy had her blonde hair up in her usual ponytail out of her face. She was the type of woman who thought like a man but kept her class like a lady, which matched perfectly with her mouth like a sailor. Michael had only enough time to take three shots of vodka at the house after he got off from work before we had to meet Maritza so he was still wearing his work clothes which consisted of a Steelers shirt and jeans. My roommate and slightly buzzed at this point, he had made it his mission to be completely wasted before we left that night. Maritza had her brown hair slightly curled while she sported a white blouse with a black jacket to go over it, jeans and a pair of heels. She was a woman of many hats. She was a wife, mother, manager and friend. She was a woman with no filter and who always had us laughing.

            We had known each other for years and even worked together at one point in time. There have been breakups, smiles, parties and goodbyes that we had seen each other go through. I guess this is what having old friends felt like. You grow up watching your parents talk about their old friends and hearing them say, “Remember that one time. . . “and just listening to some madcap adventure they had and the memories they made, but do we ever really think at the time that’d we be doing the same thing someday?

            And yet, here we were doing just that. It was a particularly special time in our lives, Joy had reached her limits with her job as a General Manager in Texas and decided to quit. The hours she had put in seemed endless. She was always tired on her days off when she’d visit us and spent that time to catch up on her sleep when her phone wasn’t ringing off the hook with her employees sounding frantic on the other end. It made me sad to see her stressed out so much. She was too young and too talented to be in that position. So with her newfound freedom she needed a place to crash while she tried to get out of her lease and figure out what her next step would be and what better place to crash than the couch she often slept on when she visited. She was contemplating moving back home to look into a job that was offered to her the last time she had visited, great pay, great hours, traveling and weekends off. Too bad Maritza didn’t see it as a great opportunity like the rest of us did. I didn’t want her to move either but if it meant that she could be happy doing something she loves then I was more than happy to see her off.

            Another piece of good news was the engagement between two of our closest friends. Ashley and Eric had been dating for the last two years and seemed utterly and endlessly in love with each other. He popped the question by naming a star after her just like he did on one of their first anniversary, but this time he had put his last name with hers. And by November of this year she would be forever known as Mrs. Eric Deleon. I could remember a trip to the bookstore that Joy, Ashley and I took to look at anything wedding related. A clerk directed us to a section that I didn’t know existed. Somewhere wedged with “Gay and Lesbian”, “Sex” and yes, even “Divorce” was the answer to all our questions: “Weddings”.

            While I browsed the gay and lesbian section finding a book of short stories from new voices in gay literature, Joy and Ashley flipped through a book on different sexual positions giggling like a couple of schoolgirls in the process. We needed to focus so we all took a book on how to plan a wedding. My head began to spin after only flipping through a couple sections about marriage licenses and deciding the kind of music you wanted to “set the tone of your wedding” no music pun intended. Ashley seemed to find one that suited her interest and gave step by step instructions. Everything you ever wanted to know from the engagement party to making the guest list. It was official, Ashley was getting married.

I took in the moment we were in drifting peacefully through the farthest corners of my mind as I always did when I tried predicting the future when Maritza must’ve caught the melancholic look on my face. She tried arguing with me that I was a townie and that I should just accept it already. I shuddered at the thought of my body being put to rest in the Dirty Curry so she ordered us a round of tequila. As we joined her in raising our glasses we looked at one another about what we should toast to. It had to be something memorable and epic in its simplicity. Leave it to Maritza to say it perfectly: “To great things for the future.” I didn’t know it at the time but I was smiling on the inside as well as the outside. There was something in the way that she said it that had me believing that there would be nothing short but great things in our futures.