Good Men Do Exist...

There are very few situations that will cause me to get down on two hands and knees in the middle of my apartment after 8pm on a Saturday night:

Money,

Moscato and...

Marc (Jacobs ;-) - but only because my ironing board is broken.

This past Saturday, however, two out of three rang true because somewhere between my trip to Bank of America and watching a boring episode of Football Wives on my couch, I lost a paycheck worth more than the one bedroom apartment I was paying to rent.  Now, generally, I do not get upset about losing something...because...well, I live in a 565 square feet of space...and nothing is never lost forever.

This time - however - the "lost something" was valued at about 20 Forever 21 shopping bags.  So, needless to say, I was in doggy position, flipping over couch cushions and heavy lifting bookcase with one hand WHILE bottle-palming Moscato white wine in the other...

I was angry...upset...irritated...

ashamed...and any other negative emotion that one can think of that begins with a vowel!

I really hate to lose something.


Correction!  I really hate to lose something that I know beyond a shadow of a doubt holds value. 
my job, my packcheck, my Seven for All Mankind high heel shoe...

As a single women, however, that previous list grows slightly.

In addition to fearing the loss of a job and a designer shoe...I also fear finding a GOOD MAN

Yes, finding (not losing) a good man....

Why? Because by finding him, there is always the threat that he may be lost  to some hoochie with a long weave, an ambitious lady with a big bum, or to a person wth higher stillettos than you named Chris(tina)...

Shortly after I lost my paycheck, I was drowning my sorrow in a glass full of grapefruit juice (read: no paycheck) at a DC networking event.  Not feeling up to doing the usual bait and switch to snatch a boyfriend with a business card...I had opted to do the unthinkable (as a single woman in DC)...which was NET-WORK (with NO INTENTIONS)...

It was during this time that I met some dude - whose face I didn't remember...but whose business card was quite impressive, and his handshake was grown man firm.  So. I emailed the next day thinking this guy is nice, employed in a sector that interests me, and "dang, it would be nice to buy me some catfish for lunch." 

I was hungry.

What I couldn't know - however - was that our first "business" email would transition step to finding out his zodiac sign, catapult into a digit exchange, land with me licking my lips at the sound of his voice on the phone, ...all before our "official" first date!

Who was this guy? I thought, who had Southern gentleman tendencies, big city boy aspirations, a sweet-tea smile and a sincerity that made me think good men do exist....

"Our Fri-date," he said "would answer all those lingering questions."

I waited a week in deep anticipation and intense premature nervousness, before our Fri-date arrived and he picked me up in a Hugo Boss suit, smelling faintly of Yves Saint Laurent...

What followed was the antithesis of an expectation...

Reservations at the Renaissance, flowers waiting on the table, a dinner discussion about all the uninteresting things old friends no longer care about, and an intimate moonlight stroll in a flower garden near the Gaylord.

It was during this time, he explained what my flowers meant...

Yellow for friendship, the foundation he hoped to build.
Red for romance, a promise of what was to come....and a....
Pastel Green vase, a nod to my favorite color.

"Are you spoiled?" he asked as he tickled my fingers and raised my ring finger to his lips.
"Nope." I said trying to keep it cool.
"After dating me, you will be.  I want to set the bar so high, no man will ever reach it."

Then he slid his arm in mine, and we slowly walked back to my Geo.

Jokingly I asked "Where'd you come from?  Do men like you even exist?"

He smiled.  "Sometimes..."

Our first date, our Fri-date, I felt was something I had never experienced...but it was an experience I had been unknowingly looking for in the climaxes of romance books and at the start of every fairytale...a man...no, a GOOD MAN who wasn't afraid to start with a "once upon a time..."

And after the shitty-key experience with Big Chocolate, the almost-never-counts experience with A Long Walk, and the failed pledging experience with My Crush...

I had stopped looking...for friendship, for love, for romance...until I stumbled into something that I had not been searching for...

A man who wanted to take charge of a situation and show me that two could possibly be better than one! 

A Boss...my Boss Boo...

I was happy...kinda...before that single woman doubt began to creep in....before I started asking myself ridiculously silly questions after an incredibly unbelievable first date...the first of which was:

In finding something so unbelievably good, how would I manage the fear of possibly losing it? 

When I got home, I placed my flowers on my coffee table and got down on my hands and knees to pick up a petal that had dropped to the carpet...

It was then that I found it....that which I had not been searching for...

Or rather, the piece of paper that had been playing hide-and-seek with me for two weeks now...my paycheck...and snatching it up I told myself that from this day forward:  I would never take for granted that which I deemed as valuable....again...