Sometime ago, I had a new neighbor who looked like the slimmed down version of Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. He was funny, charismatic, and always smiling. This guy was unbelievable, and the other women in town told me about him. The general consensus was that he was hot. He had two children (a boy and a girl), and he had just completed a nasty divorce. Ricardo also had a fluctuating relationship with a woman he claimed not to be serious about.
One day, he asked to hang out and talk. Being the empathetic person that I am, and since I had just found out that his child was diagnosed with a lifelong illness, I decided to take him up on the invite.
Upon entering, I observed that he had cleaned up for my visit, and this was pretty shocking. You’d have to know him to understand. Ricardo kept on fumbling through things to find something that I would be happy to watch on TV or maybe a movie. The conversation was light, but I did get a whiff of his drunk aroma from the other side of the couch.
So after about 20 minutes or so of watching the tube he became alarmingly quiet and just started staring and smiling at me, giving me a very odd look. Now, in my head I was trying to figure out what he was thinking, but before I could figure it out, he leaped across the couch and tried to kiss me. I some how managed to do a modified version of a crab walk to get from under him.
He took it well and began to profusely apologize and said he “didn’t know what he was thinking”.
I didn’t say much, and then quickly scurried out. My place was directly across from his, so I got home quickly, but I looked out the peephole and watched him in his doorway standing in confusion.
The next morning, I awoke to a knock at the door with him smelling good, looking nice and offering another apology.
To his credit, he was a gentlemen. A gentleman with a plan other than what he said, but a gentleman no less.
Later, I saw him with a new woman he had set his eyes on. This new female was a distraction from the devil that he really didn’t need. She was simply there to get in the way and cause more trouble in his life than good. You know, screw it up worse than what he was already dealing with. As attractive as Ricardo was, I couldn’t date him at the time, because I was already seeing someone else. He too quickly tried to get with another woman that he knew wasn’t it, and as you get older, you get tired of meeting these men who are led around by their southern region. Also, there are things in his life that he needed to get a handle on, and if he truly wanted to get a handle on it, he would get a therapist or at least, a personal growth coach.
We both had things in our life that we needed to work on, and I’m certain if we saw each other today, we would still care about each other’s happiness.
Ricardo gave me a memory.
I like memories.
