A Blustery Midwinter Saturday Afternoon

So it’s gotten to the point where it has become quite evident that I am one of the very last of the Mohicans. Friends I thought would run the streets with me even after the Beast had emerged from the sea, have one-by-one  bowed out of the game: some gracefully, others not-so-gracefully, and a few disgracefully; kicking & screaming, as they were sternly summoned away from the Happy hour circuit… by their baby mamas.

And while I do have more than 2 single friends, because these two are about the same biological age, live in the same city, & and are seemingly as far away from trotting down the aisle as I am, I have chosen to use two of my good friends as a barometer; a measuring stick that I trust will act as a timely & effective outward signal, alerting me when it’s time to hang up my cleats and make my triumphant exit from the game.

These two friends are 1 & 2 years my junior, respectively… I am 32. Or as I prefer to call it, “Magic Johnson Number”

Now I’m not one of those “Magic Johnson Numbers” who is oblivious to my situation. Life presents few instances more decidedly pathetic than witnessing firsthand the excruciating decline of an aging narcissist careening toward a dismal future. And because I absolutely refuse to be that guy, I’m sort of like Shaq. I know with great certainty that I’m in the twilight of my career. I acknowledge this truth. I do not fight this truth. I embrace this truth with every fiber of my being.

However, unlike Shaq, while my playing days will likely not yield a Hall of Fame induction, I’ve certainly had a productive career. After laboring for a few seasons in the Minor Leagues, I was finally called up to the “bigs”. Once I arrived, I maintained a solid .300 batting average, garnered two All Star selections, and was once awarded the “Most Improved player of the year” honors. In other words, my game improved, drastically!

Still, in spite of decorated resume, I know that not unlike this past Season of Real Housewives of Atlanta, all good things must eventually come to an end. And for me, the end is near. And while I may still be waiting for my Fortune-teller license to arrive in the mail, mine is an ending not hard to predict. How do I know? Well, there is always a smoking gun.  My smoking gun in my metabolism, for it has begun to take that inevitable turn for the worse. What once was clocked as a 4.5 second forty-yard-dash is now just barely sub 6.0 (seconds). A 50 inch vertical leap has gone south, to just north of 35 inches. Like all of humans, my physical tools are visibly diminishing.

My physical fitness goals are now pathetic. I'm the guy I used to laugh and point at. My aim, simply to keep my midsection in respectable order. That’ basically it. The way I see it, in my 15 years in the league, I have never once successfully wooed a young lady into my confines, only to lose her to a lack of muscle tone. Thus I have come to the pragmatic declaration that the amount of work that it would take for me to attain washboard abs would no doubt be considerably more trouble than it's worth; so as long as I maintain my stature to the unimpressive yet acceptable measure where my belly doesn’t visibly poke out of my fitted polo, I’m pretty much set.

I say all of this to say that I am “Magic Johnson Number. I live alone, and for the most part, I really enjoy it.

I sleep on both sides of the bed. I eat pizza at least twice per week. And when I come in the door in the evening, unlike a married man, I have the option to go back out if such a whim overcomes my being.

I particularly enjoy my lifestyle on Thursdays and Fridays around 5pm. You know, Happy Hour. That’s when the drinks are flowing; the music is at a tasteful, non-blaring, volume, and the well-heeled single women, fresh off work, show up to Happy hour in their sophisticated, form fitting business casual attire, fully prepared to meet & greet. Oh so much possibility exists on Thursday afternoon at 5pm.

But 5pm is fleeting. As quickly as it comes, so does it go. And with that, seemingly just as the not-yet-metabolized shots of vodka intoxicate my brain, rendering me impaired, thus liquidly triggering my courage’s steady ascend towards its zenith, the Happy Hour crowd begins to disperse, and I am left with nothing but the too oft undesirable, lingering clientele, who garner their kicks by milling about the bar, hoping to snag a fellow loiterer during the transitional period between the post-work & late-night crowds. And just like that my night comes abruptly to an end, my next bout of coherent consciousness still 8 hours away, on Saturday morning; inevitably followed by another blustery Midwinter Saturday afternoon.

For me the most inconvenient time to be single is Saturday Afternoons in the winter. Saturday afternoons in the spring yield NBA playoff basketball. In the summer are cookouts, rooftop affairs, and poolside lounging. In the fall, I can watch college football from dusk till dawn.  To be quite honest, I’d actually prefer not to be bothered during college football.  Go to brunch with your girls. I’ll be right here in this same position on the couch when return. Trust me, I will not have budged one inch. But lately, as I do little more than channel surf & tweet on Saturday afternoons in the winter, I seem to demonstrate the ongoing propensity to become somewhat introspective. 

Today, while reluctantly complying with my recently adopted Saturday regiment, I decided to take on the arduous task of clearing my voicemail.  Clearly I despise the act of clearing my voicemail, as was evidenced by the fact that I had a message still lingering in my inbox from May circa 2009. I listened to it. My once-zirconium-studded-lobes were met with the sweetest voice this side of 1990’s Mariah Carey Ballad. Granted this voice was a bit nasal, but sweet nonetheless; each word took me back to time not so long ago. I hadn’t heard this voice since probably one month after the caller had left this particular voicemail. It was the voice of a young lady I used to date.

As I listened I thought about just how much I once cared for that young lady. I couldn’t help but wonder if I could have done something more to preserve our once precious relationship. And while it’s true that she did possess her fair share of quirkiness, of which the least was her incessant desire to give ongoing life to one outlandish conspiracy theory after another; all in all, I would have to say she was a quality breezy.  But I had carelessly botched this relationship forever. I had one day, really just seeking answers to my then-befuddlement, anonymously, yet foolishly posted a questionable reference to her spending habits on Facebook. And although we were no longer dating or Facebook friends when I executed said act, I guess she, staying true to her conspiracy theorist roots, was passive-aggressively lurking in the background, monitoring my page from the shadows, because wind of this post mysteriously got back to her. And with that, trust was violated, and needless to say, without even knowing it, I had hammered the nail in the proverbial coffin. Luckily for me, God takes care of babies and fools.

But was she the anomaly or the norm? Who was to blame for this healthy string of unhealthy relationships? I quickly filed through my mental inventory. What I discovered were numerous 6 to 12 month relationships. For each instance I asked myself “who was to blame?”

There was “Exhibit A”. She was a nice girl, marriage material by any definition. I just wasn’t ready for a serious relationship. I had recently relocated to DC, and as much as I enjoyed our banter, I was just a young lad of 26. My inquisitive male nature all but commanded me to step out and explore all of what our Nation’s Capital had to offer. It was really just that simple.

“Exhibit B”, again a case of bad timing. I had recently discovered Facebook and all of its empty possibility. Still, back then, I didn’t realize it was empty. Back then I had mindlessly mistaken "empty" for "endless". The explorer in me just couldn’t keep my hands out of the internet cookie jar. I spent countless hours on Facebook misguidedly soliciting this possibility. I’ve never been the cheating type, so I left all of my dealings online until we parted ways, only to find out that indeed the grass is not always greener.

Exhibit C”, you guessed it. More bad timing. This particular relationship inconveniently overlapped with the summer; and while I would no longer postpone a relationship because it just so happens to fall between the Summer Solstice & the Autumnal Equinox, there was a time when my dating life was affected by the earth’s revolutionary orbit around the sun... Back then I had places to go, people to see, rooftop soirees to conquer. And I wasn’t going to let a frivolous little impediment like “true love” get in my way.

“Exhibit D”, despite her academic prowess, lived in the hood and possessed an unspeakably dreadful personal style. I could let the hood thing slide, but a questionable wardrobe selection is non-negotiable.  I’m talking outfit choices of the most egregious nature. And being that I’m spectacularly shallow, there was really nothing I could do with that.

But alongside these 4 were another group of women. I most affectionately refer to them as “The Kirk-out crew”, because of their shared proclivity to just kirk the f*ck out for any old damn reason. At one point or another in our relationship, all of these women had demonstrated the ability to flip out with an impressive dexterity comparable to that of former Olympic Gymnast, Dominique Dawes.

“Exhibit A”, a southern gal: Perhaps the sharpest woman I’ve ever dated; but sadly her razor-sharp intellect was accompanied by an equally penetrating tongue. Not to mention that she was crazy. And not your pedestrian crazy. I’m talking bat sh*t, wrapped in grandeurs of delusion, tucked inside of clinical psychosis crazy. I’m talking illegitimate lovechild offspring of Libyan dictator Muammar Abu Minyar al-Gaddafi & Sara Bachman crazy. And while ours was the most fun-filled relationship I’ve experienced to date, it was also the most volatile. We were either having the time of our lives, or totally at each other’s throats. Needless to say this relationship ended bad. Real bad. Michael Jackson.

Then there was Exhibit B: Any old thing could set her off; tardiness, runny eggs, Tuesday. You name it.  You never really knew what you were going to get with her, and although she was a nice girl at the core, and I was probably more physically attracted to her than any other woman I have dated to this point, the prospect of getting told off and potentially having hands laid on me because the moon was full & the tides were high, was just too precarious a burden to bear.

Sadly, I still feel like things with these 2 women could have potentially worked out had I possessed the foresight to steal a sheet of RX paper from my sister’s medical pad, forge a prescription for Adderall, fill it at CVS, pulverize said Adderall, and stealthy disperse the powder form into their respective cups of morning coffee on a daily basis.

But still, collectively, was it them or was it me? Just who is to blame for this restless Saturday afternoon blog entry?  The aforementioned women of this blog? Perhaps even God? Surely it cannot be me. For aside from my intermittently sub-oceanic moral code & sporadically-ill temperament, I’m pretty much the owner of first right of refusal, to cast the first stone.

So I guess for now my question shall remain unanswered. With that I will face my inevitable fate of waiting for this upcoming Thursday, 5pm. Till then it’s back to nonstop channel surfing and tweeting, at least until the moon & the stars align and destiny presents me with the woman whom I will spend the remainder of my days with. Or until one of the aforementioned women miraculously reenters my life, as I don’t think that any of the issues I experienced with any of these women is insurmountably irreconcilable. Well maybe the one girl I accidently denigrated on Facebook. It’s difficult to regain trust when someone publically slanders your good name, albeit accidentally. But hey, we all make mistakes.  I can say with certainty that I’ve learned from mine.

We’d always call each other “goodfellas”. Like you’d say, “you’re gonna like this guy. He’s alright. Hes a goodfella. He’s one of us. You understand?”