How Wise is "So...Wise?" I'll Tell You...She's An Idiot!

This program is already in progress...

PART I
PART II
PART III
PART IV (...breaking it off with Chicago Chick)

I’m genuinely shocked and elated.

I was always careful not to ever really comment on his “situation.” All along I tell him I don’t want any part of it. I’m just not THAT girl…the one who plays games and pressures a guy into being with me. THAT girl winds up being Chicago Chick…fighting for a relationship with a guy who felt pressured into being with you in the first place. I’m not big into the chase or the hunt, I’m too impatient for that. If I’m gonna fuck a guy, I fuck him. No peek-a-boo games with the draws. Just come get ‘em, dammit. If I wanna be with him I let it be known.

I follow a man’s lead. That way I’m able to make the decision based on his intentions.

Common sense, right?

I thought so too.

He assures me that his problems were there long before me, so of course I trust him, and I’m admittedly relieved and happy to hear the announcement. I’m even more encouraged that he comes to this decision without me prodding. Shows his intentions.

We agree early on that our connection was way beyond physical…that we live too far away to just wanna hit the skins and scram. But we also acknowledge that we both have long distance issues. We both stayed in bad ones because of the comfort of not being alone but the distance to not be smothered and pressured into anything too serious.

We agree that this between us is much, much different. Strong. Amazing. Worth working at.

Wow, more shit I want to hear. Yessss!

So she is scheduled to come to Detroit for a Queen Latifah concert in a few days, and that’s when he plans to send her packing. The day that she is to leave I’m on pins and needles, waiting for him to call me and tell me he wants us to go steady. Looking back on it now, it probably wasn’t “so…wise” to bank on a guy who was dumping someone to get to me. How you get ‘em is how you keep ‘em, is what they say.

But this is true love. I’m convinced. The kind I had dreamed of. No joke. I had actually experienced a moment a few months into this affair, a singular moment in time when it occurred to me that THIS IS IT. This is the beginning of the rest of my young life. With this man.

Deep.

At about noon that day I get a text from his number. It reads: “Hi Wise. This is Chicago. You and Ford have fun! :) “

Damn. He said they were cool like that but I didn’t expect her to take it so well. Wow, she’s really mature, and …

Hold up…he let her send me a text? Were they like, sitting on the couch, shoulder to shoulder, saying their last goodbyes, typing and laughing and shit?

“Hi Wise. This is Chicago. You and Ford have fun! :) “

I didnt even know her name before now. Never asked. And here she has my damn personal cell phone number. And she really outdid herself with a sarcastic azz smiley face.

Wai'mit (wait.a.minute.)... Is this bitch playing on my phone?

I panic and call in for backup. My girl Mack isn’t sure either. The first thing she says is, “You better than me, cuz I woulda called back immediately and asked questions later!” I’m mature she assures me.

I don’t call. I wait.

And wait.

He finally calls me at like 4 and sounds like shit. I wait for the explanation that doesn’t come.

He says they had it out. She was really upset. So hurt. He feels like shit.

She asks him point blank if there is something going on with him and Wise...the girl posing all cozy with her man in that one reunion photo...the girl her man stayed with 4th of July weekend in NYC.

He says he told her everything.

Everything?

I’m pissed. If there were problems in the relationship long before me, if I had nothing to do with said problems, then why does she need details about me?? But he’s that kind of dude.

“I couldn’t lie to her,” he says. She had seen the pics from the reunion, and she saw my name in his phone [read: she was scrolling thru your shit pahtnah, and your dumb azz didn’t even think to be more cautious. I wonder if she speaks French.]

Oh yeah. The phone.

“So… ‘the fuck were you when she sent me that text from your phone?”

“What?” He is stuttering and confused. I tell him to look in his outbox and call me back. He’s baffled. Can’t “believe she would do something like that.” Etc. etc. (PS - He was in the shower)

He’s confused and spent. And needs time to think.

Just as I knew before I even saw him at the reunion that I would like him…I knew – without having the luxury of looking into his eyes this time – that there was much more to this story that I would never know.

He informs me that she requests his presence in Chicago that weekend to talk. He owes it to her, he says. But he will only drive down Saturday and not stay overnight. Again, I can see that this script will be edited several times before it’s all said and done.

We don’t speak for a week. When we do, he tells me he did stay overnight in Chicago and “a lot was said.” He tells me he needs time to figure shit out. That he hates leaving me in the dark and wants to talk to me about it so badly but doesn’t know what to say. He says he will call.

He does call, a week and some change later. I didn’t interrupt his time out not once, save for a “be safe” text on a day I know he is traveling for work.

When he does call he tells me that he made a mistake.

He hurt her so badly and he feels awful for it.

That they’ve been through a lot.

That his spending time getting to know me was what was keeping him from bonding with her.

That he really didn’t TRY with her.

He tells me that he needs to stay with her.

That he wants us to remain good friends.

Are you fcuking kidding me? You are fcuking kidding me, right? Ashton muhfuckin Kutcher is bout to jump out of my fcuking oven as soon as I start cussing, I know it!

After some choice words of discontent and accusations of acute bitchism, I politely decline his offer for friendship and don’t speak to him again for over 6 months.

I spend that time trying to pretend it never happened. I had so much going on at the time, thank God, that I just got busy at staying busy. That last convo was so disturbing and fake that it completely changed my perspective of him.

I was in love with a Bitch Dude. An indecisive Fuck Boy. He was so obsessed with being seen as a nice guy that he twisted his arguments accordingly to cover his azz, to discredit my very common sense allegations of a fucking flip flop.

“You said yourself that there was a chance I’d stay with her.”

That’s cuz I’m a realist. And because you NEVER gave me any indication that you were even considering staying with her. In fact, you flat out told me you planned to dump her somewhere between “U-N-I-T-Y” and “Latifah’s Had It Up To Here”!

In the aftermath I had to live with that rejection, wondering how he could walk away from the connection that had him so hype for months that he told anyone who would listen...(including his mama, who LOVES me). I had to wonder if he ever really even had those feelings that he professed.

And of course I had to relinquish the dream. A dream that does not come along often for this sista. It’s hard to find the right combination of ambition and brains, humor and sarcasm, culture and class, versatility and depth, pride and pipe, to match my own diverse quirks (and intense sex drive). I don’t meet that guy often, so it’s no wonder I let down my guard when I found this one. And the one time I do….THIS. Of course.
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Months passed of not hearing from him, thinking about him, wondering is he misses me. Wondering if he thinks he made a mistake. Wondering if there’s still a chance somewhere down the line. Be clear, I’m no Wait Around Chick…which is why I told him to fuck off when he wanted to stay in touch.

But when you get a glimpse of a great thing… a thing that even in it’s complications… feels so good and looks so bright….it’s hard not to want shit back.

It’s hard to walk away from the IDEA of Ford, who I now commonly refer to as the Ex-Con (no, brother never did any hard time). The life I was anticipating with him was beautiful. And I mourn for it in some ways.

But I can still have it. I realize that now. And it doesn’t have to be with him. I saw him a few weeks ago. I hang out with one of his friends, and one day Ford gets on a plane from Detroit and shows up. I had no idea that was coming. But it was just another in a short string of recent ambushes. I hear he'll be in town next weekend. He IM'd me last night and wants to meet and talk.

I won't front, whole thing’s a struggle…but I continue to keep it movin. Sure to make a MUCH WISER set of decisions, next time. Cuz there's always a next time.

THE END...AINT NO MORE COMING.AND I'M EXHAUSTED.