the death of common sense

Continuing with tales of unfortunate but often self inflicted melancholic mishaps (sorry, just had to give the grammar a shot there, hee hee), here's my next offering. So before I go off on one of my deviating rants again, without much further ado, I bring to you, Mr. Potato-head (me just in case) in his latest misadventure:

Oh No, You Didn’t?!

‘twas the summer of ’99. again. Same place. Same good, special, happy time that I miss so much. And again featuring my main man Yoz. Birds of a feather, eh? Anyway, let me get on with it before I do like I do (which I am doing now) and yak on uncontrollably.

Staying over at Yoz’s place at the beginning of the holiday, I happened to run into some old friends; friends I hadn’t seen in ages. One happened to be my ex and the other, her best friend; more or less sister. Anyway, it felt quite good seeing them again as they were people I considered great friends and hanging out was really fun. However, seeing my ex again triggered off feelings that had never really faded away after the break up. I kept quiet about it and just smiled to myself in my nostalgic reverie.

I spoke to the best friend later that evening (sorry for not using real names, I know how annoying that can be. Okay, we’ll call the best friend Ginger and the ex Savannah. Ha ha. Some names, eh? And subsequently, all aliases will be indicated with an * by their name. cool? So on we go). So, I spoke to Ginger later that evening and told her how great it was seeing her and Savannah again. She shared the sentiment but took it further: “So, what’s going on? you and Savannah think you’re smart, yeah? I saw those looks. Something’s still there.”

The accusation was of course pleasing but also surprising. Thinking about it now as I write, maybe Savannah did mention something but naturally, she has to act like her girl got her ish together. Hmm. Anyhoo, glad to have her best friend’s support, I called Savannah to set the ball rolling. Long story short, we started dating shortly after.

The relationship was good. We were doing good, great times and all. However, I did have a few issues. She always came round to Yoz’s but she didn’t feel too comfortable with me coming to hers. Best I did was say goodbye at the entrance to her building once. I ain’t mad though. She had her reasons, and I respect them. Then we never went anywhere together. We just hung at Yozi’s crib. So we decided to hit the cinema one Sunday and that was fab.

Sunday came and along with it came a little glitch. See, we had planned to go to The Warner at the O2 Center (can’t recall what movie right now) but her fam was going there as well at about the same time so we couldn’t go there. Well, not that we couldn’t but she’d just rather not. I guess because she had opted out of going with them, being sighted there, with a dude no less, would just be avoidable stress. I wasn’t too pleased about this but I understood. We opted to go to the Odeon Swiss Cottage down the road but as fate would have it, nothing we wanted (more like “I”) to see was on. I started moaning and all, she was apologetic and all so we went back to – you guessed it – Yozi’s. we had a minor argument about it but made up soon after, making the best of the evening with – ahem – cable TV.

Even though Yozi did his own thing and gave us our space, we never really enjoyed that kind of quality alone time couples experience, so I decided we spend a whole day – I mean cock crow to owl hoot – at my bro’s place where we’d have the place to ourselves. She liked the idea and said she’d check her job schedule (she didn’t work everyday) so we’d hook it up.

We arranged to meet on the one day but that didn’t happen. Something came up on my end, so we had to reschedule. She understood, GOD bless her heart, and rescheduled for another day; two days later I believe. That day came, something else (virtually the same thing) came up and I had to cancel again. She understood but she didn’t understand really.

I apologized and said I could cancel. She said I shouldn’t worry (which the doofus didn’t understand meant that he had BETTER!) even though she had turned down two good offers for work that morning to be with me. That line says it all, right people? At that point, you don’t even call to cancel; you just don’t show up and run to your woman’s side. I mean, it ain’t rocket science! But what did Chichi say? ‘Oh, okay honey. I’ll call you when I get back.”

What could be so important that you’d blow your girl off twice in two days just like that? After I hung up the phone, Yozi had this questioning look in his eye. “What’ve you done now?” he asked. I narrate. “And you told her you had a job interview, right?” Uh, no Yozi. I told her the truth. “OH NO, YOU DIDN’T?! You are so stupid you know? There was no need for that. You are so unbelievably stupid!” I gave him my reasoning. It made sense only that it was flipping irrelevant! I made the wrong call and ringing back to try and salvage it now would just make it worse. The writing was on the wall. I had f**ked up! Needless to say, she became my ex for the final time two days later. It still hurts today.

So, what could I have done that was so bad? Well, day one, I broke it off because a “technical” ex I hadn’t seen in a while came into town from Nigeria en route to America, so that was the only day I could see her. Yes. That’s what I said. I broke off a commitment with my girlfriend to spend the day with my “technical” ex. Classic huh? I know. Yozi was kind, eh?

Ok, so what was day two you ask? Well, a “proper” ex came into town from America and surprised me at Yozi’s. she said we had to hang out because that was her only available day before she left for… Paris I think it was? Anyway, silly Chichi said okay and that’s when I placed the call to my “proper” girlfriend, explaining exactly why (like I had done with the technical) I had to break off our alone time yet again in less than 48hrs. please don’t crucify me. I was a retarded 19 year old that thought telling the truth always paid.

That was where my “reasoning” came from. London is a very small town filled with big leaking holes called mouths. Some prying eyes would spot me with either or both of my exes and run off to my current to happily spill the beans. What then after I may have told her I was with fam? She’d believe I was cheating for sure (for the record, I wasn’t, honest). So that’s why I told her the truth.

I felt that was commendable, which it actually is, however, what I failed to realize then was that it should not have even happened in the first place. “oh for real, you’re around? Dang, it’d be good to see you but I’m kicking it with my girl today.” Exes would have understood and respected that and if they hadn’t, that’s their problem – they had their term of office and there was a new commander-in-chief calling the shots.

I just didn’t understand that then. I thought I was being a man. Well, depending on what angle you look at it from… that’s just what I was doing.

Moral of the story: A bird in hand is worth two in the rearview…

Word to Jaheim… You better put that woman first!

(Originally posted on May 19th, 2006)