“I’m tired of being shot down, put down and dissed
I wanna be picked up, held tight and kissed
But things like this don’t happen to dudes like me
Because I’m more Coldplay than I am Ice-T” – Murs, “The Pain”

⚠️ CW: Brief mention of domestic violence ⚠️

*Some names have been changed.

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It’s Valentine’s Day. Pretty pointless holiday, if you ask me. I’ve always believed that if you really, truly love someone, then you don’t need a day to celebrate it. Because you should be celebrating that love every single day. That being said, though, I’ve never really been in love. Well…that’s not entirely accurate. I guess maybe I’ve experienced unrequited love. But that’s really about it.

So, seeing that it’s V-Day, I figured I’d take you through my love life. Don’t worry, this won’t take long. However, to give you the full picture, I’ll have to take you back a bit.

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I was born in 1985 in Cincinnati, Ohio. Mom was a model (she had a brief contract with Ford Models at the time) and dad was a pro football player (he played tight end for the Bengals, Eagles, and Giants, but spent the most years with the Bengals). They met at a party. I don’t know much about my dad other than what my mom has told me about him, because shortly after I was born, he walked out on my mom and I. Unbeknownst to her, he had 4 other families and didn’t want a 5th.

My dad wasn’t a good man. He simply wanted my mom to be arm candy and nothing more. He wouldn’t even explain the rules of football to her, because to him, football was a “man’s thing” and “why do you need to know anyway” so when my mom would hang out with the other WAGs at the games, she would have no idea what was going on. When they disagreed on things, he hit her, several times. I won’t go into detail, but the damage he did to her was pretty bad. That, plus the aforementioned multiple families thing, is why they got divorced when I was less than a month old. After that, it was just me and her. Until my grandparents got sick.

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My grandparents were high school sweethearts. My grandfather was a Welsh man. My grandmother was a Creole Black woman–her family was from Shreveport, Louisiana. Both were only children, and their parents were also only children, so both of their families were very small. And even though interracial relationships were highly frowned upon back when they first got together (according to my mom, my great-grandfather hanged himself on my grandfather’s wedding day, because he didn’t want his son marrying a Black woman), they got married anyway. And they stayed married for over 50 years. Eventually, my grandmother was in a car accident and became legally blind. Then she became bedridden. By the time I was born, the senility had set in for both of them, so they were barely talking to each other. My grandfather would hang out in his “computer room” (that’s what we all called it since it was an office with my grandfather’s computers, books and whatnot, but really it was more of a man cave) and turn the TV in there up loud enough to drown out my grandmother’s voice. Then the bad habits came. The cigarette-smoking. The pipe tobacco. The alcoholism. Several decades later, my grandfather passed away from pneumonia. Three weeks later, my grandmother died of a stroke (apparently it’s possible to literally die of a broken heart). Even through all of the bad times, the love was still there.

Then I grew up. Would I experience that kind of love for myself? The answer may shock you. Just kidding, it probably won’t.

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I’ve never been good at talking to women. Everyone always says it’s easy, but it’s not. And people always give the same advice. “JuSt Be YoUrSeLf.” Sure, tell my nerves that. But that didn’t stop me from trying.

First, in 8th grade, there was Bethany*. Prettiest girl in school, and she knew it too. One day she approached me and asked if I had a girlfriend. Of course I said no. Then she asked if she could be my girlfriend. Of course I said yes. Then, when I saw her the next day, she pretended to not even know me. Laughed at me in front of all her friends and said something like “Ha! As if I’d let a guy like HIM be my boyfriend!” I shrugged it off and went about my day. How do you even respond to something like that?

Then, high school. You might be surprised to learn this, but high school wasn’t a good time for me. In 9th grade, I ended up going to a boarding school for the first semester. Not as punishment, mind you…quite the opposite, actually. I was friends with the principal of my middle school and he ended up leaving that school to go be principal at a boarding high school in some small town in Ohio, so I ended up going there too. It was a VERY small school. I’m talking less than 30 students in the entire school. While I was there, I met a girl named Evelyn*. She was super pretty AND super nice–the perfect combination. One day, while we were walking around campus I sang Sara Smile to her. She was impressed with my singing, but even after I officially asked her out, we agreed to just be friends. There were others. There was Rochelle*, who was my age and liked me a lot, but I was too shy to officially ask her out. Plus, her big sister Ashley*, who was in 11th grade, didn’t like me anyway, so she wouldn’t have approved. Then there was Julia*, who liked how much I was into computers. Keep in mind this was 1999, so the Internet was just starting to get put into schools and whatnot. Unfortunately I made the mistake of telling one of Julia’s friends that I had a huge crush on her and word got back to Julia, who pretty much stopped talking to me altogether after that. Didn’t matter, anyway, since my mom eventually pulled me out of that school after one semester because of my shitty grades.

From the second half of 9th grade to the first part of 12th grade, I went to an all-Black Catholic school. It sucked. I never felt like I fit in there. Some of the girls there were cool though. One girl I met there in 9th grade had the same last name as me and we used to always joke that maybe we were actually related and just never knew. I wasn’t her type, though. Then there was Amelia*, the homecoming queen. I had French class with her and she apparently had the hots for me. I simply thought she was just messing with me, but every time we had class together she would wink and blow kisses at me. Even invited me to sit in the back of the class with her once. She kept saying how she wanted to go to prom with me and I kept brushing her off, thinking she wasn’t being serious, because what the hell kind of senior wants to go to prom with a freshman??? So, prom came and went, and she ended up going with some other guy. I found out later from one of my friends that yes, actually, she wanted to go with me and NOT the other guy, but because I was too dumb to pay attention to her signals, she thought I wasn’t interested.

Then in 10th grade, there were two girls that liked me a lot, Maria* and her best friend Jessica*, who were both in 12th grade. Maria was a fine Latina girl and Jessica was a Black girl with freckles. I never met a Black girl with freckles before and Maria was fine as hell (even with her braces), so I was immediately drawn to them both. Plus, they were both super nice. So nice, in fact, that one day Maria gave me her number (!!!). Did I call it? Of course not. In my mind, she was just being nice. No way would she ever actually want to hang out with me. Turns out, yes, actually, they both did. But nothing ever came of it. They eventually graduated and I never saw them again. (Well, that’s not entirely accurate. Years later, after I graduated high school but still lived at my grandparents’ house, Jessica worked as a cashier at the drugstore up the street. I saw her there one day and recognized her. We talked for a minute, but again, nothing ever came of it.)

12th grade was weird. For whatever reason, the principal decided to shake up everyone’s class schedules and many 12th graders (including me) ended up in classes with 9th and 10th graders. That’s how I met her. Allison*. The first girl to ever really, truly like me. She was a freshman. Black, cute face, had her hair cut like Halle Berry back in the day. She was also very, ahem…well endowed. Okay, she had huge boobs. There, I said it. Anyway. One day, I was eating lunch by myself (I was the only 12th grader in my lunch period and didn’t know anyone else other than the teachers) and I looked across the room and saw her. She kept whispering to her friends at her table and looking back at me. Oh great, she’s laughing at me. Fucking great. Then she walked to the front of the room, said something to my English teacher, and pointed to me. Why TF does she keep pointing at me??? Then she approached my table. We talked for a few minutes. She saw me reading a gaming magazine (I used to bury my face in magazines at school so that people would leave me alone–obviously, it didn’t work) and we talked video games for a minute. She had a PS2 like I did and was heavy into RPGs–she loved Dark Cloud at the time. Then the bell rang and I quickly speedwalked to my next class.

Later that day, she called me at home. Apparently she got my number from one of my friends at school. We talked on the phone for hours. It became our daily habit. Eventually, one day she decided to ask me out. I don’t remember how she did it, but it was very casual. Unfortunately, after we were dating for a couple of months, I ended up transferring schools. It happened so fast that I didn’t even get a chance to clean out my locker. One day, I called her after school and decided to break up with her. She was simply too much younger than me and, to be honest, she got very attached to me and I just didn’t know how to handle it. I’m used to girls rejecting me. Laughing at me. Teasing me. And now all of a sudden one comes along and she’s literally obsessed with me? And she thinks I’m handsome? Laughs at all my corny jokes? How am I supposed to handle that??? Truthfully, I didn’t know how. But the main reason I broke up with her is because at my new school, I told some of my classmates that my girlfriend was younger than me and they started laughing at me, calling me R. Kelly. I told her this and she suggested that we keep seeing each other in secret and simply just not tell anyone. But I didn’t want to do that because it didn’t seem fair to me or her. So I broke up with her and never heard from her after that.

Fast-forward some years and I’m helping my mom run her computer shop. At this point, after being single for a long time I had decided to try dating again. So I made a profile on OKCupid. That’s when I met Tiffany*. She was a BBW (it was right there front and center in her OKCupid profile so I guess she was okay with the term), short, glasses, shoulder length brown hair. We talked on OKCupid for a couple of weeks before we eventually met in person and we hit it off pretty much right away. She majored in music at the college up the street from my mom’s shop. She was also a huge nerd. At first we bonded over our mutual love of video games, but we also found out we have similar taste in music too. We hung out constantly. The problem was that we were both huge introverts. One day just for funsies, we both took the Myers-Briggs personality test. Turns out, I’m INFP and she was INFJ. Eventually I learned that two introverts will probably never end up in a relationship with each other. Because eventually somebody has to take charge of something. But neither of us did. She was one of those “I don’t like putting a label on things” types and I didn’t want to pressure her into anything, so we pretty much just stayed friends with benefits.

Then, when things in my personal life got bad (that’s a story for another post), we lost touch with each other for a while…until one day she hit me up on Facebook and told me she was getting married. To a woman. I was hurt at first–I used to joke to my friends that sex with me was so bad that I turned her off of dick altogether–but I got over it. I’m just happy that she’s happy. Even if it’s with someone else. And yes, she invited me to her wedding…and no, I didn’t go. I figured it’d be too awkward for me being there, so I pretended I had something else to do that day and completely forgot about it. We still keep in touch nowadays…somewhat. We’re “friends” on PSN, so I see her online once in a while. But neither of us has reached out. I’m okay with it.

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So. What was the point of all of that? I guess I don’t really know the meaning of true love. But of course I don’t. My dad left when I was literally just a baby. I was born too late to see my grandparents’ relationship at its peak. And even when my mom dated around and eventually got remarried, my stepdad (RIP) wasn’t around long enough for me to pick up any pointers on love from him, either. Maybe I’ll never have a relationship like my grandparents. Maybe I’ll fall in love again. Or maybe I’ll just be single forever. Only time will tell. But I’m hoping that I’ll be happy with whatever happens. Because happiness is very rare for me nowadays.

Thanks for reading and happy Valentine’s Day.

Song of the Day: Jill Scott – Pressha

Jill Scott is back! Her new album is great. Highly recommended.

Bonus Song of the Day: Von Pea & The Other Guys – Chasing Amy aka In Your Heart

Story of my life.