I Called my Ex, Then got a Call From my Ex

JANUARY 1, 2006

I said to myself that I wasn’t going to write this blog but after what happened this morning I have to.

The longest blog I’ve ever written PERIOD and it’s not that funny. read some now, come back tomorrow read a little more.  Lol.

BOWLING GREEN, KY-  This is it people. The Last Supper. Nine hours into the New Year and it’s time to enjoy my last meal at Waffle House. Giving it up for the New Year. So here I sit about an hour south of Louisville with a triple scrambled w/ wheat toast dry, grits in a bowl, and a waffle…and a ‘Sister 2 Sister’ magazine. (* I should probably quit reading those for the new year as well*) 

I tried to leave the comedy club immediately after the show but instead swung by a church for a quick prayer and trekked back to the hotel.

 No disrespect to the city of Louisville but I was ready to get back to Birmingham. So I left early Monday morning.

What you see below are pictures of myself and the other two comedians bringing in the New Year on stage at the comedy club. You’ll notice the Time’s Square Ball on the big screen behind us and people celebrating. What you’ll also notice is me on stage calling my ex-girlfriend.

Rumor has it that whatever it is you’re doing when the New Year comes in is what you’ll be doing the rest of the year. I’m figuring that I would love to have her as a friend so I put the superstition to the test and gave her a call.

     And I don’t mean friend in the casual sense of the word. Anyone I consider a friend is pretty much anyone that can call me “Where ever Whenever” if they need something. Pretty much anyone currently in my top 8 can attest to that truth.

     Yeah we broke up and that sucks but from a personality stand point there’s plenty of upside to this woman.  Positive people keep you motivated it’s good to have them in your stable of friends. This is the first time in a while I feel like I’ve dealt with someone and when it was over I was a better person overall.

 Anyway, we spoke briefly about plans for 2007 and shared a quick joke. It was cordial but overall the conversation was shallow and short. I think she may have a complex about being friends with people that she used to date. Her response to my hopes for a friendship in 2007 was…

 “We’ll See”

Fair enough.

     Considering the circumstances surrounding our break up I couldn’t have asked for much more than that.

I don’t have the time, nor do I care to ever get into the reasons for our break-up but for those of you who read her blogs and have subsequently been sending me e-mails to get “my side of the story” please chill out. I know some of you just want to help, and that’s nice of you, but some of you people I HAVE NO MYSPACE RELATIONSHIP WITH WHATSOEVER!” get you some business please.

   It’s weird to check your messages and some random dude is asking you “Wassup wit you and O-Girl?”
On contributing factor to the break up (* I Think*), Is that I do something(s) that she claims to be unacceptable behavior for a husband. (* maybe acceptable for a boyfriend but not a husband*) For the sake of this blog lets say that the activity is um…..

”Butt-Naked Tae-Bo in a Police Station”

Touching on the actual issue(s) that I think broke us up would only erupt a volcanic debate with you guys that’s going to leave you either attacking me or attacking her and that isn’t going to change either of our points of view on the issue so I think butt naked calisthenics gets my point across just fine.

Now lets say that I did Butt Naked Tae-Bo during the relationship’s early stages and both parties fall deeply in love with each other and every thing is all good. But a few months later when marriage talks start to surface she goes…. “Hey um…you shouldn’t do Butt Naked Tae-Bo in a Police Station. It’s not healthy, the police might beat you into a coma.”
 

    To which I reply…”I been doing butt naked aerobics in the Police Station for 10 years, you need to trust me when I tell you that the police won’t beat my ass.”

HER: “Well if a man loved his wife he wouldn’t take unnecessary risks like that. What if the police beat you to death? You’d leave your children without a father and me without a husband because you’re doing something that you don’t think is dangerous?”

 “How about a compromise, You do butt naked Tae-Bo at the Fire Station. Or you do it at home where it’s safe.”

ME: “But baby, I don’t think it’s dangerous and you’ve seen since the day we met that I’ve been responsible. I’ve been dancing butt naked in front of the police years before I even met you so clearly I know when I’m about to get my ass beat. I know when to stop.”

HER: If you love me then you’ll quit dancing butt naked.

ME: if you love me then you won’t make me choose.

Needless to say we broke up because I don’t see the point stopping something that I never perceived as dangerous  before the relationship started.  Maybe I’m a bone head for doing for breaking off something with a great woman. But that’s that the point …

TO ME.. this issue simply appears to be us discovering something about me that could potentially make us incompatible.  It’s not me choosing dancing over her, it’s me knowing that I’m going to continue to dance butt naked because I don’t think I’ll get beat into a coma.”

TO HER. I think this appears to be me choosing butt naked dancing over being with a woman that loves me unconditionally. As far as she’s probably concerned I’ve broken up with her over something stupid. And if you love someone with all your heart and they leave you for what you consider to be a stupid reason, then surely anger will be one of the prevalent emotions.

    I just don’t think it’s unrealistic of anyone to need someone who will take their good WITH their bad.

    Now should I mature and naturally grow out of dancing butt naked and become a what she deems to be a responsible husband then so be it. But if I DO NOT grow out of it, then who I am in the present has to accepted and assumed to be my persona for the next few decades. And I don’t think she could say that she’d marry me in my present form.

We all have pet peeves. I don’t date women who smoke. Never have. I can be great friends with a smoker but after seeing my father die of cancer, I wouldn’t want to fall in love with someone who smokes just to witness that slow death again. Too tough on the heart.
  But If I dated a smoker for a few months and then come marriage talk time I told her I’d like for her to scale back the cancer sticks so that she could be around for her family, that’s a noble gesture, but if I truly love that woman then I think I have to be mentally prepared to date her even if she doesn’t quit smoking. Otherwise I need to get out of the relationship. No matter how deep my love runs for her.

I’m getting off topic.

But understanding why we broke up is important to the point I’m trying to make.. I think.

Someone in a previous blog I wrote asked me if I believed in being friends with women I used to date. Of course it depends on why the two of you broke up, but nine times out of ten if one party feels like they were done wrong then friendship is going to be hard.

     My ex from college isn’t that fond of me I think. We’re cordial via e-mail once or twice a year when I do a mass mailing to announce some random TV appearance but other than that it’s radio silence.  She was 26 and ready for marriage. I was 20 and was not. So we split. I think she left that situation feeling as if she’d wasted 14 months of her time.

      I think people who ask the question… “Can you be friends with an Ex?” are being closed minded. The issue is much broader than simply relationships. Hell you could apply that same question to employment or associates.
Everyone has that one job they quit on good terms. You left for college or you had a better job opportunity and everyone was happy for you. When I left Golden Corral in Tallahassee to do stand-up full-time it was all love. To this day I can walk back in that store and get my job back. I’m still close with some of my old co-workers.

      Same thing goes for 95.7 Jamz in Birmingham. They knew I had to do comedy full-time and couldn’t be there every morning so they let me go on a “indefinite-hiatus”. The door is always open for me to drop by and chill at Jamz

    Now compare that to Shoney’s where I was fired because I could no longer work Friday nights.  Friday night is the seafood buffet. But I instead took a Fri. Night class on campus. Manager got pissed and cut me down to 7 hours a week and made me roll silver wear until I quit 2 weeks later.

Good Ol Days at the Golden Corral
Now do you think I’ve set foot in that Shoney’s since then?  Do you think I’m even cool with the people who used to work there? No.  Because I was done wrong for what I believe to be no reason.

My point being…The question shouldn’t be… “Is is possible to be friends with your ex” The question should be.

“Is it possible to be friends with ANYONE after you feel like they did you wrong.”

The first thing that has to happen before friendship is forgiveness.

    I got arrested when I was 19 along with two buddies. I got a hold of a department store charge card and we went to the mall and charged up a bunch of clothes on the card. Later all three of us were arrested for Credit card Fraud. I got hit with extra charges because I was the one who presented the card at the register. I confessed to everything (* partly because they had me on tape. LOL *) but supposedly during the trials it was brought to my attention by my lawyer that my 2 buddies had identified me as the “mastermind” and “ringleader” of the debacle.

     I was pissed. For the life of me I couldn’t understand why they were pointing fingers at me about stuff THAT I HAD ALREADY CONFESSED TO !!.  I was served up with 3 years probation. I believe they got 1 year probation. For the next year or so that bothered me. I kept it inside but I for a while I felt like they shitted on me. But then I finally realized, that I shitted on myself by breaking the law in the first place.  We were young we were dumb. And much like so many other things that appeared to be 'Life or Death' when I was 19, they now all appear to be trivial and pointless.

To this day I don’t know if they really said that about me in their police confessions but even if they did, I don’t care, they’re my boys and we went through a lot of stuff together. I now look at them the same as I did before the arrest. Whatever they need, Whenever.

 So here I sit at Waffle House this morning kind of feeling good about reaching out to my ex but then I got a “Happy New Year” call from my ex-girlfriend of 4 years ago. We talk about twice a year and each time she calls me from a new number because I block the number that precedes it.

     This chick did me dirty. Cheated on me with the father of her child, while sending freaky text messages to ANOTHER negro across town. When I found all this out I was ready to cuss her out, and all that blah blah, but instead I took the high road and just quit talking to her.

    Instead of taking the “pass” that I granted her, this fool calls me back at 3 am faking her own suicide in an attempt to get me to take her back.

To comfort myself I did jokes about this fake suicide on BET, Comedy Central, and David Letterman. If you look in MY VIDEOS here on my Myspace page you can see the joke as it was performed on Comedy Central & David Letterman.

  The BET Appearance was the sweetest, because I told her mom and family to all watch me on BET that year. So I’m sure the mom & sisters were all crowded around the TV to watch their relative’s ex-boyfriend on TV. 

I can only imagine the look on her mom’s face when I walked out there and did jokes about her daughter’s mental instability. That alone was better than cursing the girl out.

This form of venting helped me to forgive her. She however has mistaken my forgiveness for a desire to be her friend again. Which is probably why she calls me 2-3 times a year. Every time she calls me I laugh quietly and think to myself

”She must think we’re going to be friends or something.”

   Every time I hear her voice it’s a reminder of the first time I loved someone 100% with reckless abandon got smacked in the face for it. Maybe my ex feels slapped in the face for me choosing to dance butt naked.

   What was so eerie about the conversation I had with the ex- from 4 years ago was that it was VERY similar to the convo I had with the ex- I called nine hours earlier. I wonder if she was laughing and thinking to herself…

”He must thing we’re going to be friends again or something.”

 Since it’s only been a week it may be too early to tell where her head is on friendship and I guess I’ll never know until she calls me again. But if I sounded to her ANYTHING like my ex from 4 years ago sounds when she calls me checking my friendship gauge then I think I’m better off not calling.

    Because my ex from 4 years ago sounds pathetic. I’m sure I’ll call a few times but after 2-3 five minute conversations, that’s going to get old very quick.  I’m not going to call for 4 years straight trying to force someone into a “hostage friendship” lol.

  If she felt like I did her wrong there’s not much I can do to change her point of view I just have to roll with the cards that are dealt.

Better to be honest and dance butt naked now, than to get married and take my clothes off again right?   I don't know either.

Hell, maybe she never calls again, maybe she takes up butt naked tae bo too, maybe I give up butt naked tae bo, Maybe we end up married by the end of the week, maybe she gets a restraining order, maybe the Cubs win the World Series in 2007. What I do know is that...You can love someone in solitude but you need their cooperation to be a friend. My hat’s already in the circle.

Happy New Year You Turds.

            “Honesty is usually rewarded with solitude”- Roy Wood, Jr.