Some Things I Can’t Forget

Do you have any specific skills or abilities that seem quite useless to most people but may end up being helpful in other cases?  There are several in my repertoire that make support my fabulosity and one happens to be the ability to remember every face and while remembering specific details about him/her; details that the average person wouldn’t have given a second thought about.  Now the usefulness of having face recognition is certainly helpful if I ever needed to identify a criminal in a line up but for the purposes of dating, this skill is extremely useful but perhaps is a double-edged sword at the same time.

The benefit of this along with an elephant-like memory is that I can avoid time wasters I might meet on the street or online.  I’ve talked about how many times a man from the past has reached out to me online trying to make another connection.  The fact that this happens often enough can mean one of several things – I’m the vision and type of woman certain men really want, like-minded singles keep flocking to the same types of sites or I have dated far too much.  It is quite likely to be a combination of all three and in most instances where some dude I know from somewhere, met up with or even dated a few times is going to be the one I wished had never contacted me the first time let alone a second or third.

Even with all of the garbage mail received from creeps, losers and those who just didn’t make the cut, no matter how fancy a man gets with his profile and photos, I WILL remember him.  For instance, this past weekend a message came in from a guy who received one of my “take care” send-offs about a month or so ago and even though he switched around his photos and changed up his profile a bit, he was still known as being the douchebag who called the shots on who handles the check.

I remember EVERYTHING about my interactions with men.  From how they were dressed when we met, if they had a fresh scented or heavy cologne, spoke eloquently or stuttered, had a wandering eye or receding hairline, are sloppy kissers or really great lovers, if they never open doors or didn’t check to see if I made it home, tried to strangle me or were steps away from committing date rape.  I remember it all.

So when a cute guy reached out last week and I looked at the profile photo next to the message a wave of familiarity took over and I mumbled to myself “He’s a cutie and I think I know him”.  Once I read the profile of this BlAsian (think mocha-colored Chinese man if he smiles too hard) looking man and noted the physical characteristics, his background in law enforcement, hobbies and sarcastic style of writing – a quick scan through the rest of the photos confirmed my hunch and it was time to respond and I added “I think we know each other, what is your name?” Waiting for his response seemed like the longest two minutes every and sure enough – it was exactly who I thought it was and once I told him my name, that recognition kicked in for him as well.  A few moments later, numbers were exchanged and we started one of those catching up conversations.  Most of my encounters with comebacks are unpleasant and I feel as if I’m being cursed for someone even making contact with me again but this one was welcomed.

The BlAsian and I are on a roll trying to squeeze in over 20 years of life experiences before we have to get back to work and then he asks the dreaded question – why did we stop communicating?

He commented how gorgeous I was and that any time spent together when dating, from what he remembered was good, so he couldn’t understand how it took him a change review of a woman’s profile designated as being a 100% match for him to reconnect with me.  My memories of him came flooding back as well;  I was very much attracted to him (he still looks the same), he was a sharp and quit-witted man with a decent sense of humor, fabulous in bed and worked long/late hours.  A hangover indeed and while our ending took place as a result of a pretty serious event, The BlAsian isn’t one of those men I had ever developed a true dislike for.

I was hoping he would forget about wondering and move on to the next topic of discussion but he didn’t and pressed the issue asking what happened.  You better believe the reason why we stopped dating and ultimately fell out of touch was crystal clear to me and I even replied “I don’t think you want to ruin this happy reconnection moment” but he wasn’t letting up so I told him in a way that only I could – we stopped talking because I chose not to keep our child. Yes, yes – I was pregnant and my memory tells me my mind was made up the instant I found out and at 23 years of age, just one year shy of finishing college, a baby definitely was not part of my life plan.

There was a LONG and awkward silence followed by him saying:

“Oooooh.  Yes, that’s right and I was so upset with you.  No, I was completely pissed with you because you know I wanted a child of my own badly and you pretty much killed that dream.  But that was a long time ago and I’m so happy that I’ve found you so let’s get on with it.”

He says let’s get on with it, as if life had just been on pause for all of these years and he’s assuming we can just reconnect and run through the sunflower fields.  I still remember how pissed off I was at him when he flat out told me that he would have nothing to do with an abortion and that I was “on my own” if I did it, so  I’m not so sure about the let’s get on with it.  There were some trifling things on my part that came after our last baby talk that I won’t share now, but I’m wondering how much of our past he actually remembers.  Aside from all of that, I have my suspicions on why he’s been a single man for several years so it’ll be interesting to see how this reunion of sorts works out – if at all.

Until there’s a cure…

Carmen Jones