Now that I let you in on my encounter with the Man of Mystery and how he fell into my world around the same time that my heart flirted with Chris’s lips, caved and slowly let down each boundary I had created, it’s only fair for you pick up where you left off. The day I was told that I was cute, but not sexy.
I felt like throwing a rock at the Man of Mystery and telling him he was as dumb as a box of them. I hate to admit it, but he’d been right…about Wednesday, the day my lips brushed Chris’s and I nearly fell character to my favorite John Donne poem. While Chris and I were nowhere close to having “one blood made of two,” the Man of Mystery was emerging as the jumbo flea in my life, sucking the dork out of me and slipping me into a red satin dress only to fall flat on my face at the bottom of the stairwell. I went with it. All of it. And I still do because he’s proven himself correct, especially with Chris’s response in last night’s text.
Chris and I talked about many things, but we didn’t talk about the kiss. We didn’t want to make it “awkward,” so when we met the next day, our eyes locked with the same intensity as our hands had the night before.
He graduated from Harvard; he was raised by Yale graduates, one a doctor and the other a lawyer. I was impressed by him and his humility, but we were only friends for many reasons I alluded to in the last post. Remember that whole I came to learn things about him that he didn’t know I knew, but I knew and wish I hadn’t known? They weren’t bad; they were just different. Not some scandal; it’s just me and the way I like to be when I see fog in a distance like I’m driving down the 99.
His fingers ran through my long black locks, my heart dashed, but the night was over and the secret race had begun. I wanted to put up a fight. Not judge him; not dismiss him, but rather learn about him with help from the Man of Mystery.
“You’re cute, but you’re not sexy…and that’s probably why Chris hasn’t shown interest,” said the Man of Mystery to me.
I rolled my eyes. I didn’t want to be a slut to begin with, but was I missing something between the lines? I switched out my glasses for contacts on an as needed basis, slipped into heels when my flared jeans sagged to the ground, but I’ll admit I’m a fan of my multicolored Camis and I won’t do without them under a deep V neck. If classy constitutes cute then I’m fine with my cuteness and Chrislessness.
“Sexy doesn’t mean trashy, Rip. It just means you’re more than cute. It’s like you’re uptight, there’s no pizzazz, but when you’re ‘sexy,’ you come off young, youthful, fruitful in the way you carry yourself and a little skin in the right places gives a little extra flare, you know what I mean,” responded the Man of Mystery.
For a woman who’s philosophy that’s always been, “What you see is what you get,” I was not willing to give more than what I wanted seen. I was always friendly, but did I have some sort of coldness, whether in dress or speech, that reverberated into my aura and translated as being cute, not sexy? Whatever it was, I had to figure it out before I saw Chris again and before I was marginalized as being closed-off, I mean cute.
Stay tuned next week for more of Rippin’s The Man of Mystery on Brown Girl. Until then check out the therippinblog.com and the official Man of Mystery facebook page!
