On to the Next One...

Admittedly, I still lose focus on what (or who) exactly has true value.

Two days after my bad date with the Energizer Old Spice Guy and a few weeks after my attempt to seduce my Crush had failed, I found out that A Long Walk, the gentleman in whom I had shared a string of beautiful dates with, was: "in..a...relationship" on Facebook as of 72+ hours ago!

Now...usually, I am happy when people get "in a relationship" and make it all public!  And, it only becomes an issue when the name following "with"  is one that I hadn't expected.

In this instance, the name I expected to see was mine.  Well - not really - but still I didn't expect to see "hers." 

I felt shocked, upset, hoodwinked, bamboozled and led astray!

A Long Walk had a GIRLFRIEND!

Every fiber in my being wanted to be upset.  I mean, who was he to move...on...

I mean what happened to that in-between incubator space that kept "potentials" in layaway....

Who had broken into my personal Potential Man store and cashed in!

I suddenly had an ill case of nostalgia, carefully recalling how A Long Walk and I had gone to dinner and to late night movies. How A Long Walk had given me a piggy back ride at midnight while we leisurely strolled a college campus, hugged me with less than 2 inches in between, and massaged the invisible corn on my pinky toe while we watched a Jesus movie...

Didn't that make me a girlfriend-in-waiting...or at least loyal layaway option?

That was a rhetorical question, btw! Because of course, that did NOT make me anything but the girl a day late and a dollar short.  Or, the girl who had joined the losing team, and got T-K-Od by some other chick in the title fight.

So I grabbed my Blackberry - my Ride or Die - and dialed my girlfriend, Flowerchild.

"A Long Walk has a girlfriend," I shouted. "And it's not me!"

"Okay, sweetie," she said.

Did she really just say: Okay. OK. Oh-kay!

She, a woman born and raised in Long Beach - the hometown of Snoop Doggy Dogg, Mr. I'll Pop a Cap in You - was supposed to say something more gutter than that. Like:

"Fu*** His Frienship"

"Fu*** His Girlfriend"

"Fu*** Dating in DC"

Flowerchild quite obviously was in that East Coast "I-Have-a-Reputation-to-Protect-Right-Now" mode. So, I hung up and called Southern Charm.

And tried again...

"A Long Walk...is...gay!"

"Oh my gosh, sweetie. Forget him. You can do so much better."

I lied.  Obviously. But only for five minutes before I told her that a Long Walk wasn't gay, he was just taken.

I mean geez ladies, the romantic in me couldn't let go of how A Long Walk had slow danced with me in his room and fed me fruit roll-ups. Similarly, the realist had to get...well..."real."  A Long Walk had kicked me out minutes after I asked him to cuddle me for a night. What reality told me was that "said girlfriend" had to have been the reason for the expulsion, OR maybe (just maybe) I had been "just (another guy's) friend."

I was two seconds away from grabbing a cigarette and a lighter and burning my dresses in a Waiting to Exhale Fashion, embracing a new "one of the guys" persona and re-stocking my wardrobe with sports jerseys and cargo-cut jeans.

BUT

Then I remembered...in dating, nothing is official until you get that title.

Until he calls you his girlfriend, his wife, his jumpoff, or his best friend (almost like a sister!)...you are in that in-between space where he coulda, shoulda, woulda but doesn't really have to choose you.

So, while Southern Charm substituted every curse word with "dang" "shoot" and "butt," I politely excused myself...found Jay-Z's new hit and turnt (yes turn with a "t") it all the way up, represented for all my East Coast Single Ladies that didn't get the title...

On To the Next One...

...and decided to pay my layway and value what I have a little bit sooner next time...