The two that got away

I have had a lot of great relationships with women in my life.  I couldn’t rate them if I wanted to; that is, accept for the one with my wife, of course.

But, looking back in all my dealings with the opposite sex, there are two women that stand out for two very different reasons.  They are the ones that I actually didn’t have a relationship with.  Of all the women I’ve dealt with, these two always stand out in my past.  These are the two that got away:

I will use false names because I don’t like to embarrass people on the internet.  But, I will try to keep the pseudonyms close enough that these women know that I’m talking about them. 

Shyra was a goddess.  I haven’t seen her in 10 years and to this day, she is the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen.  She was mixed or something.  She had the most beautiful gray eyes that you could get lost in at a single glance.  To this day, I don’t know if they were contacts.  All I know is that I loved to see them.

Her eyes are what killed me.  The rest of her is what killed everyone else.  She was about 5’9” and had a perfect body.  Anything a man likes on a woman, she had it.  Breast, legs, perfect teeth, long hair, she had it all.  What is better, she was nice.  A woman that gorgeous on a college campus knows that she could have any man that she wanted but every time I saw her, she would smile, more with her eyes than with her mouth.  People can fake smiles with their mouths, not with their eyes.

We met because she worked the I.D. counter at the gym, and young Cogito was a gym rat.  Before I found a love for weight lifting, I loved to play basketball.  Anytime I got enough free time I would hit Robinson gym on campus.  There were all sorts of ballers there; from Asian dudes to tall girls to guys from KU’s basketball team.  Most notably Ex-NBA/D-league player Billy Thomas would demoralize cats there on a regular.  But, before the balling came, you would have to swipe your I.D. and at the turn style, when I was lucky enough, sat Shyra.  Her job was to make sure the I.D.s would clear but she would always chat with me.  It was strange for me because, being the nerd that I am, I wasn’t used to such attention from such a pretty girl, but only a jerk would not chat with anyone after several attempts to strike up convo.

Outside of the gym we would bump into each other out at the local night spots.  She would be surrounded by her friends, obviously used to being hit on by random niggas, but when she would see me, she would smile and wave.  Women, you need to stop underestimating the power of the smile and wave.  That shit can break a man down.  You know what’s even better than that?  We would dance.  When a woman leaves a pack of friends to dance with you, it means that you are more than a random nigga to her.

So, you’re probably wondering how I let the goddess get away.  The problem was, she was out of my league, or so I thought.  She was popular, gorgeous and was going places and I knew it.

I would tell myself after every time I saw her that I was delusional.  There was no way I could get her.  Eventually the prophecy fulfilled itself and she graduated and moved on.  Like so many women from my past, we stay in Facebook contact but the young nerd in me doesn’t contact her much, thinking that she would never remember the me that used to love gazing into her eyes.

Looking back, I believe that she liked me and that I should have tried something… it is better to look back at a time that you tried and failed than the time you punked out.

About the same time in my life, I got the pleasure of meeting Sharon.  I will always remember the first time I saw her.  She was headed into Jayhawk tower C with her roommate.  I felt so happy when I saw her going into her room, right across from the room I was moving in to. 

Sharon was nothing like Shyra.  She had beautiful brown skin, short (no ass), and gave ya boy the cold shoulder at every possible turn.  For the first few months she avoided me like the plague.  I would always wonder what was up with the Black girl across the hall.

Time went on and I understood.  She just didn’t mess with Black dudes and I, if nothing else was a Black dude.  I was one of the few in our building that wasn’t an athlete (one of the few on our campus, really) so I was pretty damned low on the totem pole (which made Shyra’s smile so much sweeter).  But the thing that attracted me to her is that we were unapologetically who we were, as different as we were.  I think that sort of honesty about ourselves let us gravitate toward each other.  Also there was the fact that all the white people around us kind of assumed that we would eventually mate like zoo animals.  Every time I was seen with her, everyone would just assume that we had finally got together.  I remember one warm spring day when I was walking her back to her apartment, just chatting it up, and my roommate saw us on his way to class and said “Aww, so cute.”  She was silent until she was inside her door.

That’s how it was with us.  Any sign of romance and one of us would shut down.  Our best times were spent playing Dr.Mario and Tetris, never so much as a kiss, which is surprising considering the amount of times we got fucked up together.  But she wasn’t in to me so that is how it went.  Somehow, we always remained friends.  After her dates with corny White dudes and my relationships with maladjusted Black women, we knew that we had a real friendship there that we could always turn to.  Not that her precious White dudes didn’t bother me from time to time.  I remember one particular country boy came to pick her up and he had a handle bar mustache… I was not pleased.

She didn’t like my girlfriends either.  And they sure hated her ass.  I would talk about her like she was one of my boys.  Somehow telling the young women that I was dating that I was out all night with Sharon really pissed them off.  I suppose that they had good reason.  I can’t say that I was ever in love with her, but I will love that woman until my dying day. 

She was my friend that had no reason.  She was comfortable being herself and I was happy being me around her.  I guess you could that love.  Somehow it never went further than that.  That being said, friendship never has to.

Yet, she is a beautiful woman, and I am a man.  Hearing her claims of loneliness will always cut me deep.  They did then like they do now.  Not only because when a real friend hurts, I hurt, but because I know somehow, someway, I could have done something about it.

I feel a little guilty because I’ve found a spouse and she hasn’t.  I can’t wait to go to her wedding.  Lord wiling, I can avoid throwing shade at the groom.  She got away from me and I was blessed with a wife and daughter.  I still want her to have the same feelings.

I guess that’s life.  Sometimes they get away but that’s no reason to stop fishing.  It’s also a good reason to remember.  Because those two got away, I have plenty of reason to hold my wife close and make sure that I never, EVER have to say the same about her.