I went to my favorite Friday night hang out. I hadn’t been there in a while and I needed to see my people and have a drink, or maybe two or three. It felt good walking in and seeing smiling faces and feeling the love from the crew. Dang, how long had it been since we had all gotten together?
Somewhere around my second drink I spotted George. He had been coming here probably as long, if not longer than I had. One night I was standing at the door with my girls and I saw him at the bar with several women around him. I had seen him before posted up at the bar a different woman each time. He stood out because he was pretty much the only white guy in the place on a Friday night, so I was curious. “Who’s the older white guy with all the black women?” I asked Kelly. “Oh, that’s George. He’s a really nice guy.” She replied while dancing. I didn’t speak to him that night, but a few months later when I was there celebrating my birthday, the band announced that he was also celebrating his birthday. I went over and wished him a happy birthday and we hit it off from there. We actually had a lot in common so from time to time we would go to dinners and football games, or make plans to meet each other at Zona’s. Since that introduction, we made it a point to celebrate our birthdays together.
George was sitting at the bar talking with a woman. They appeared to be together so it was my intention to just say hello and keep it moving, but that didn’t quite happen. He was keeping her company until her girls arrived and we, instead, had a long conversation about ‘us’. I told him that I saw the picture of him and the woman at the last Falcons game. That took us down a rabbit hole I wasn’t expecting. My sister had already told me that I needed to get over myself and not say anything to him about it, but I’m not exactly known for holding my tongue. He told me that he knew I had feelings for someone else, but he loved me and if I would just give him a sign that he had a chance with me, he would drop everyone else and be there. His sincerity made me want to cry. He was genuinely an all-around good guy. Why couldn’t I love him the way that he loved me? Clearly, I had some sort of feelings for him because I was jealous when I saw that someone else was giving him attention. At the same time, I had all this shit going on with dude and I didn’t want to involve George in that. I wanted him to be happy and if the girl in the picture made him happy, then that’s who he should be with, and I told him as much. That didn’t stop him from buying my drinks and a to-go order of shrimp to take home to my daughter. He was thoughtful like that. He always asked how my son was doing in college, and when we went out, would make sure that I took something back for my girls. Unfortunately, I could never give him my all because of a few reasons, not the least of which was the fact that I was dealing with this one over here.
On my way home, I called him. It was time for me to make a decision, piss or get off the pot. We talked for hours about the status of our relationship. The conversation was intense. We were clearly not exclusive, and our situation was now complicated by his status. We both had expectations, although he would like to believe that his maleness prevented him from being able to formulate such things. However, when he asked how I saw our relationship going and I didn’t answer in the manner he wanted, he became upset. He went on for at least an hour telling me how I should have answered his question. Clearly, he had an expectation. After another hour, we finally agreed that we were saying the same things, we just expressed them differently. Soon after, I went to bed. I needed to get some sleep so I could be on time for my massage appointment.
That massage was everything. Those 50 minutes were the most relaxing 50 minutes I had had in the last two weeks. I wished it didn’t have to end. Before I left, I made sure to book my next session. I ran some errands and then went to his house. When we went to the clinic he had asked if we could spend some uninterrupted time together. It took a couple of weeks, but I arranged for my children to spend the weekend with their godfather so I could spend the weekend with him.
Over dinner, we recapped the phone conversation now that we were both fully awake and sober, to be sure that we were on the same page. And we were. We both wanted a supportive, caring, long-term relationship. We spent the rest of the night cuddled up on the sofa intermittently watching TV and talking. While we talked, he would sometimes pace the floor as he sipped on a glass of wine and smoked a cigar. He was fearful and somewhat remorseful about the decisions he had made. He told me he was afraid that one of the women would out him once she was contacted by the health department. He asked if I thought he should post his status on Facebook first. I told him he didn’t need to do that. He still needed to be able to work and I didn’t think any of the women would out him anyway since outing him would out them.
I asked him pointed questions about his behavior and why he did what he did and he opened up to me about things in his past. He confided in me that he really didn’t like himself and even considered suicide since his diagnosis. I told him he should really go to the counseling session at the health department or find a private counselor who could help him. My heart went out to him.
“Before you walked into the club that night, I was thinking about how I was going to tell you. I mean, I knew I had to tell you, but I wasn’t ready when I saw you walk in the door. I wanted to wait until Monday when you could do something about it.”
“Thank God for Saturday testing sites.” I interrupted.
“Why do you think you didn’t test positive?” He asked me.
I didn’t hesitate, “Grace, plain and simple. I ask God every day, or almost every day, to protect me and my children from harm seen and unseen. This was the unseen harm.”
He silently sipped on his wine and puffed on his cigar as if he were mulling that over in his mind. “You should have been pregnant.” He said from out of the blue.
“What are you talking about? Last summer?” He had been asking me to have his child for some years, and I had always said no because the situation wasn’t right. We weren’t in a relationship then, and we were nowhere close to getting married. I was already a single mother to three children. I had no desire to add another child to the mix. And then we had “the scare” after seeing each other after one of my trips overseas. “Do you really think that would have made a difference?” I asked.
He shook his head yes. He thought that if I had become pregnant that would have changed him and his life course and we would not be dealing with this diagnosis now. I wasn’t as confident. I felt having a child would have just increased the number of people affected.
The next day we lounged around and he played some of his new music for me. The songs weren’t complete, but there was one in particular that gave me chills when he played it. I told him that one would be his number one hit, his moneymaker. He said it was inspired by me. Of course, that made me feel good. We smiled at each other, and then he looked thoughtful.
“If you're still negative three months from now, will you leave me?”
“I’m not going to leave you because I’m negative. If I leave you, it will be because of something else.”
VII
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