Be ye ever "ready"... (it's in the Bible, y'all!)

I’m sitting here listening to the driving rain beat against my window. The sound is both calming and relaxing. It reminds me of another rainy night many months ago. I, along with Jenna, and my bestie, ended up at Chi-Cha Lounge on U Street on some very cold and low-key night. There are times when the girls and I feel like doing it big, although those nights are becoming less and less frequent. Some days, it scares me that I don’t have the stamina that I used to. Other days, I am comforted by the fact that I am, indeed, growing up and it is evidenced by the fact that I no longer get dolled up every Friday and Saturday to party until dawn. At any rate, on this particular night, we wanted to get out of the house but didn’t want to do anything that would require any real effort. Chi-Cha can be a great place when you are surrounded with the right people. I can’t think of two more “right” people than Jenna and my bestie, so needless to say we were having loads of fun commenting on the colorful characters milling around us as we sipped on equally colorful cocktails.

Just then, the front door opens and a tall, dark, and handsome man comes gliding through the room. Although the meeting was not arranged in advance, he heads straight for our table and when he presents himself in front of us, there are hugs shared around the table. Tall, Dark, and Handsome was this really great guy I had gone to high school with and hadn’t seen probably since… well, now that I think about it, probably since high school. In high school, he was nothing to write home about (as Daddy would say). He was known more for his bright smile and lovely personality in those days. He was tall, lanky, and somewhat awkward at the time – all qualities that were lost on teenage girls.

But suffice it to say that he had definitely grown up since then! He was all man… and FINE. He had grown into his long limbs and added some weight to his slender frame. He was dressed nicely and smelled fantastic! (Always a plus, dudes! Please take notes.) He sat down in an armchair across from our couch (the atmosphere and décor of Chi-Cha is sorta like somebody’s half-finished basement) and caught us up on his life. Since high school, he had earned a degree in business from a small school out West, played football for his college team, interned at a bunch of sports agencies, and worked for the the NFL. He had just hung out his own shingle to rep a few guys playing European and Candian ball and was doing quite well for himself, which – of course – made him all the more attractive. He had just happened to stop into Chi-Cha as he was wandering the city searching for something to do on such a frigid, gloomy night. He was "happy" that he had run into us (his words, not mine!).

Agent (as he will be known for our purposes) settled in and joined our conversation. After a couple of drinks, the conversation moved in the direction it inevitably switches to whenever there is mixed company: relationships. We were, admittedly, tipsy at this point. Agent was not, but seemed to enjoy our giddiness and our frank language in the course of our conversation. None of the three of us are women with disciplined tongues. We pretty much say what we want, when we want, to whom we want. Some people love that about us, but more people hate that about us. Funny thing is, we don’t really care. When we are together, we feed off each other and our conversations become loud and animated.

Agent just soaked it all in. Occasionally, he would throw in his two cents – not that we paid him any real mind. He was more an audience than a participant in our conversation. But then, someone posed a question to him. It had to do with the signs we should look for that will tell us whether a significant other is “the one”. I am always interested in what men think about “the one” mainly because I have this theory that says, in a nutshell, that when men settle down it is more about timing and when women settle down it is more about the person a.k.a. "the One"(I will break this down in a future post). Wanting to see whether this rang true, I basically asked him if he was ready to settle down. Just the mere thought caused him to virtually go pale, which is pretty damn hard for him to do since he is about Djimoun Honsou’s complexion! He answers with an emphatic “no”. I can respect that, I say. At least you know. I continue. So, if you met the perfect woman right now and you were given an ultimatum, stipulating that you either marry her right now on the spot, or you would never see her again and never get the chance to be with her ever again, which would you choose? He doesn’t even have to think on it.

“I would let her go,” he says.

We all groan. This dude has got to be smoking some serious crack. He flipped the question to us. Without hesitating, we all agreed that we’d be getting married right then and there to the man of our dreams. He shook his head, almost as though he were pitying us, and took a sip of his drink.

“You just haven’t met the right person,” I point out. “If you had met a woman who made your knees weak, you would never even consider letting her go.”

He looks uncomfortable. “Look,” he says. “I’ve already met the perfect woman. I was with her for a while. But then I broke up with her because I knew I wasn’t being fair to her. I am not ready to settle down and I thought it was best for me to let her go rather than to string her along.”

I am flabbergasted. (I love that word. Don’t use it enough…) How could this man be sitting here saying that he thinks he’s already met “the one”, but he let her go because he wasn’t “ready for a relationship”.

“You think she was ‘the one’ and you let her go?” I ask incredulously.

He nods his head in the affirmative.

“Why?” Jenna, bestie, and I say in unison.

“I already explained. That’s all there is to it,” he answers.

“Bu… but, what if she meets someone else? What if she… what if she moves on and you haven’t found anybody and you… you have to watch her settle down with a new man?” I stammer. The thought alone has me sweating bullets and I can’t see why he is taking it so calmly.

“Well, you know what? If she does, I’ll be happy for her. I’ll deserve it because I let her go. I know it’s immature, but I’d rather be fair to her than to make her be in a relationship with me before I can do right by her.”

At this point, I was pretty much done with the conversation. I mean, despite the flawless complexion, breathtaking smile, and magnetic personality, it was obvious to me that this dude was a complete fucking idiot. I, just off GP, don’t debate with idiots. I also don’t try to make sense out of things that will never make sense since that is essentially an utter waste of time. So, because I was undeniably disgusted by what I had just heard, I left Jenna and bestie to try to make sense of Agent’s thought-processes and I retreated into my own thoughts to contemplate the reasons why an otherwise perfectly sensible person for all intents and purposes turns into a absolute fool when it comes to relationships. I never came to any real conclusion, but I do feel like my men/timing v. women/person theory was validated based on what I had heard. At some point in his life, Agent will be dating a perfectly acceptable woman who is clearly not “the one” and will recognize that now he is “ready for a relationship” and that woman – remember, she is NOT “the one” – will become Mrs. Agent. And she will be totally oblivious to the fact that she got wifed by pure luck. She simply happened to be in the right place at the right time. This doesn’t make sense to me, as I’m sure it won’t make sense to most women and probably even a few reasonble men. I am baffled. Not baffled because I expected Agent to say something different. His answer was appalling, although not necessarily surprising. I am more baffled about why God would put men and women on Earth together and expect us to peacefully coexist even though our thought-processes are so drastically different.

I later found out from a mutual friend that I actually know the woman who is Agent’s “the one” personally. And she is, by all accounts, one of the sweetest, most beautiful (inside and out), classy, funny, intelligent woman you will ever encounter. How he could pass her up… well, I’m still not sure about that one. For all that he has to offer, she matches that and THEN some. He is literally on drugs (or mentally challenged - PC term for RETARDED) to let her walk away. His argument is, of course, that he is not “ready”. At first I respected that, but after a little thought... what is “ready”, really? (As Daddy says) Everything in life is a choice. If he wanted to be “ready” he could choose to MAKE himself ready for the sake of being with the love of his life. Now THAT makes perfect sense to me. After all, he is not complaining about the quality of the person in question, rather the convenience of the timing, which is irrelevant to me.

I know that I am making Agent sound like a terrible person. He’s really not, though. He’s pretty much universally acknowledged as a cool-ass dude who has his shit together. And I don’t want to take that away from him. I also don’t want to take away from the fact that rather than be selfish and dog out this very special lady we were discussing, he did decide to be selfLESS and let her go. I (begrudgingly) admit that is not necessarily the worst thing he could've done. There I said it. Anyway, I am sure that she will find someone who is more than willing to take her off Agent’s hands. And when that happens, I wonder if Agent will be kicking himself for not sucking it up, growing up, and getting himself “ready”.

In my other life, I am routinely guilty of making broad, sweeping generalizations about large groups of people. I really don’t want to be guilty of it here, but I have to say that sometimes men can be stupid. Not SOME men, but ALL men. Y’all dudes really trip me out. This was an egregious situation, but I honestly think that most men would probably follow Agent’s suit, which makes me really sad.

I recently heard that Agent is still in contact with “the one”, which doesn’t really surprise me. All the regular readers will remember my “The Boys Are Back in Town” series where every single one of my long-term boyfriends came back to me at some point to let me know that they had jacked up a good thing with me. And I suspect that Agent is keeping the lines of communication open with “the one” because propping that door open makes it easy for him to be able to walk back through it at a later date if he so chooses. That pisses me off… no, that’s an understatement. That INFURIATES me. Because when/if he is ever ready, she might just be there to receive him, which he soooo does not deserve. I think letting him attempt to walk through the proverbial door, only to find that there is no one home is the only way for him to see the error of his ways. I would love for “the one” to be standing there with her new man who appreciates her and values her presence and I hope that she would be strong enough to look Agent in the eye and tell him that his interest is “too little, too late”, spin on her stiletto heel, and walk off into the sunset. That would serve his ass right! But, then again, maybe this is just a sensitive subject and I am overreacting…

Naaahhh!