179 Reasons to Love Me, Part 1

Xmas song for Romantic Pessimists(click on this link only if you want to carole and cry)

Christmas Day 2009.

I found myself doing what a lot of romantic pessimist do during the holidays…window shopping the online dating profiles.

I can’t remember this guy’s screen name but he had an awesome light-up-the-screen smile. I had sent him an email a month before, telling him just that…he never responded.

Now on this day we emailed back and forth, pulling out those little mundane facts that one shares on Christmas morning via email. (We compared dinner menus)

At some point it crossed my mind that it was a sad state of affairs to correspond with a complete stranger via a dating website on Christmas morn. I did, indeed, feel sad.

I found out he was recently divorced, he was cooking dinner at his parent’s home, and his parents were still married.

I shared that I was mostly cooking for sport and an ode to the ‘back-in-the-day-mamas', who rose from the bed, with rollers in her head, and cooked all night.

He said he had a lot of cooking to do and asked for my number.

He called the next night and we talked for 6 hours straight. The Goods:  Divorced father of 5, on the job over 20 years, vehicle owner, home owner, and demonstrated sense of humor.

I have to side track here to say…one of my innate abilities is to know certain things about certain people.  Something in his communication style told me that this black male didn’t date black women.

I asked “Do you date very many black women?”

He paused and asked why I had asked that. I told him I was curious.

He answered, “To be honest, no. Ever since my divorce, black women pay absolutely no attention to me. I even work with a few who are so disrespectful to me…I mean, I am their superior but they will run to get my white counterparts a drink of water and none for me...I hold the door open for them and they don’t even say ‘Thank You!’ "

Just that last paragraph should have been enough for me to write him off…(if you don’t understand that you will by the end…)

We shared some very similar thoughts in fate, love, and religion.

 He said he hadn’t had a marathon phone conversation like that since high school. When we got off the phone I was cartwheeling and somersaulting…as far as I was concerned the pluses outweighed the minuses.

We talked more over the next two days ; deciding to meet for drinks at a neighborhood restaurant.

(The Romantic Pessimist's drink of choice: Midori Sour)

Mere minutes before our date, I received two texts from him. The first one said ‘Looking forward to seeing you ’. ( This text excited me to no end; it was a complete sentence and none of that text lingo.)The second text was a picture* of him, standing in a hotel room, in nothing but his Fruit of the Looms.

*(Not him!!)