PREVIOUSLY ON FREE YOUR MIND... Sudden thoughts about my great big hearthrob, and my great big heartbreak. I go home. I come back, wondering what now. Somehow, my great big hearthrob and I start speaking again. I start having those old feelings again...BE STILL, MY UNSMART HEART.
Monday evening, I finally got my extemely weak ass to work. I don't know what the hell kind of flu it was but it seemed to be a virus straight from hell. I would have sworn on the Bible in court that I had had malaria, if it weren't for the fact that about three of my co-workers had been in bed for a week with the same virus right before I got back from Gh. And malaria doesn't come with the sniffles and coughing; I damn near coughed up my whole ribcage. And when I did get well, I was so weak, I actually got dizzy standing up. I remember trying to go get Dee, my cousin/nurse, a b'day present and what a task it turned out to be.
Yeah, well, I come home from work Monday evening and Stan calls. We talk. He starts his usual pitch. I'm like "do you ever think of anything else?". We talk. He says" Lemme ask you something. If you were married and you ran into me somewhere, would you sleep with me?" If it had been anyone else, I would have had a totally different reaction, but it was Stan, and I know how his mind works, I knew exactly what he waws trying to find out. "No, Stan," I say. "What the hell kind of question is that?"
"Just answer."
"Well, I take things like that really seriously. If I'm married, it's probably the real thing, so I wouldn't cheat on my husband." Then I ask him the same question. What he tells me makes me ask him to repeat himself. I couldn't believe what he said. Dude very offhandedly and casually tells me " When it comes to you, there isn't anything I wouldn't do."
I say" Oh, Stan."
Oh, yeah, ain't no telling how it made me feel. Too bad I don't think it's so cute now. Hell, it's scaring me. Did that statement apply to just me or what? I'm scared to ask.
So we talk. He asks me if I still have feelings for him. I hem and haw a bit. Not wanting to commit too much and not wanting to miss out. I still hadn't seen what he looked like, mind. I know it's downright superficial of me, but hell...
But all throughout, I swear, I didn't really believe I was actually in danger of experiencing the me and blind date really clicking thing, only to meet and EEEEK!! No, not with Stan. I just couldn't see it happening.
But I'm cautious. I tell him" Hey, I don't really think I really ever stopped liking you, if that's what you want to know." He says he feels the same. So I want to know what now. Exactly does he want from me. Oh Stan, my Baby Love. Dear Stan fumbles, hems and haws. His discomfort takes me back nine years when he first told me how he felt about me. It was the same shy bumbling approach. I thought it was really ironic I had been the one carrying the crush all this time and at the final moment of truth where secrets were being revealed I had more confidence than he did. I'd really like to think that he had been harboring the same crush on me that I had on him, but come on, who are we kidding, I'd had a crush on Stan since I was probably eleven, maybe before that, cos I remember him from kindergarten. Ain't that something?
So now, me and Stan are back at that place where he's trying to divulge his feelings and making a debacle of it. After a lot of "uhm, uh, ahems" he says" Damn it, you know what I mean"
I say" No, I don't. You have to outline everything this time, that way it will never come up and have you say ' I never said that. You took it the wrong way'. " Flash back to Ren. He was the king of that filthy move.
Stan's still hedging and trying to say it but just can't find the right words. I feel sorry for him. So I say" Listen. I think I know where this is going. I'm gonna cut you some slack cos I know you're paralyzed when it comes to expressing your most inner self. Don't let's say anything yet. Let's just make like two people on a blind date who already know each other. Let's keep talking and see how things fall."
MY BIG MOUTH. Five months later, I'm writing this and if I could kick myself I would. I shd have MADE him say it. But at that time, I had no freaking idea how things
were going to fall. And I was making the same mistake I had made with Mill and Luis. My overconfidence that oh, yeah, I got this. I'm gon handle it. Ain't no way MY feelings gonna get all twisted up. No, that will be his role.
So we talk. Stan and I. Calls me at work. Calls me at home. Regularly. Perfect schedules in sync. I work 8-5. He works 3-11 GMT. Do the math. He gets home at around midnight. I'm doing the same at 6 pm CT.
Then he tells me how big he's gotten now and I nearly pass out. Stan used to be scrawny. Now he's a whopping 236 lbs? I couldn't get over it. But he wasn't finished. He proceeded to make himself sound as unattractive as possible. I couldn't get it, but looking at that scene now, I think I know why. Stan wanted to see how genuine I was. Anyway he tells me his stomach's gotten quite large and his hairline is receeding. Even though my heart sank with every description ( coupled with flashbacks to the one provided courtesy of Becky) I still just couldn't see him looking so bad to unattract me. So I talk to Belinda and Joe and they confirm what Stan said. Now I'm convinced I've been talking to Shrek. Okay, so now a picture is absolutely crucial before I can go any further. But every day, I looked forward to hearing his voice. Suddenly I didn't care how bad he looked. It was Stan, and that was it for me. Besides, as sexy as he sounded on the phone, I was thinking no one that sounds that good can possibly look that horrible.
I started psyching myself up to see hefty men differently. I practised on a coupla guys at the HD. Guys I figured would be around Stan's weight. It wasn't too hard. After all, it was Stan, my Stan.
One day, we' re talking and in the course of telling me about his adventures in ATL, he also tells me how one of his friends had requested a vibrator back from the US. He says "I just took it to her yesterday and she started using it right in front of me. I would have hopped on her if I had brought some rubbers with me."
I'm shocked silent. I can't even think my usual "what the hell?" . "But nothing happened." he's saying. I'm so quiet he asks me if I'm alright. I say yeah. Try to glide over the shit he just told me and say "Damn, y'all Londoners are some freaks". But I can't let it go. I ask him if he was joking about what he just said. He says no I'm not. I say, dude stop playing. He says I'm for real.
Oh, God! Again, in retrospect, that was what should have made me finish that converse really politely and say goodbye, I wish you all the best. Have a nice life.
The very first crack in the surface. Ignored it cos I was like well, it's not like I'm his girfriend or anything. We're just talking. But it kept occuring to me just how unkosher it was. I don't care how uncommitted you are and how honest you think you shd be, you don't tell a girl you like her, and then run some shit like that by her. It's not kosher.
Anway. So we talk. Then as suddenly as he had appeared, he vamoosed. Didn't hear from him for about five days. Gone from calling everyday to silence. So I call him, I think, and he calls me later that evening. He apologizes for his silence and says the past couple of days have been exhausting for him. Been sleeping really late. I ask "Doing what?" He "Says talking on the phone". I remember thinking, well you weren't on the phone with
me so what the hell is that got to do with anything? We talk about nothing for a few minutes, he says "okay, I gotta go now. I'm really tired" I'm thinking Oh, God, just like that, it's over. Tears (the first of about 7 million) slide down my face. I say okay. Goodnight. I hang up and try not to cry.
Oh Stan, my Baby Love.
To be continued.
