As if the text message after a date night with Chris wasn’t proof enough that the Man of Mystery’s words hold validity, I had to hear it from that one guy who’s rough around the edges and challenges everything. So I did what anyone in my position would do…I welcomed opposition with open arms and discovered a faint pulse in a place I never imagined.
A cynical boulder headed my way hours after I posted Man of Mystery #3, and if I didn’t move quickly enough, I’d have to suck the blood out of my arm before I chopped it off. 127 seconds of listening to his opinion would do that to me, without a doubt. So the possibility of him making his way into my office to tell me that not all men were the same and that they didn’t all believe that the grass was greener on the other side, didn’t surprise me. But considering an hour had passed and nobody brought it to my attention, it was a safe bet that silence carried truth.
I hid behind my twenty-inch screen at work, avoiding eye contact with any passerby, especially the Jewish guy, but just as my luck goes, he didn’t run into the door as I hoped. Instead he swerved left; I put on my hard hat.
If there was one incentive to bite my tongue, it was his perfect iTunes library with over ten thousand tracks properly labeled and categorized, artists identified, album covers attached, and number of stars allotted. No joke. I was envious and a near lapse in judgment almost rendered him a date with my Persian friend until I realized that offering her in exchange for appropriate identification of mismatched playlists wasn’t exactly excusable under the female code (yes guys, we have our version too).
So I let my iTunes Longstocking stay as is with Track 01 Sinatra, Track 02 E-40, Track 03 Adele. I wanted to cave and ask The Boulder for a favor, but what good did the tracks do me anyway when Chris clearly couldn’t be my funny Valentine and tell me where to go if I was rolling in the deep, coming to terms with throwing out the excess baggage in my life.
If ever I was to find the guy who’d defy his family name and climb up a ladder at night, creep into my bedroom, adore my angelic sleep (along with an occasional few drops of drool), it wasn’t Chris. And after last post, I spoke to our mutual friend Vinny who told me that I suffered from what he called “Damaged Bird Syndrome.” Was I trying harder to fix Chris’s wings, so I could be the one to set him free? Sounded odd to me, but true. I listened.
The Boulder finally rolled in.
“So Man of Mystery #3, huh?” he asked.
“Uh-huh,” I murmured.
I knew he had read it, but I figured it wasn’t up his alley, so of course he’d have something cynical to say. Turns out that the same guy who doesn’t leave his La-Z-Boy on Sundays, was one with a heart after all.
“Was it interesting or no?” I asked.
“It was Gonzo,” he said, “Is it true or fiction?”
Sadly it was true (but not in the urban sense!). I was fixing wings. Kissing and telling, exaggerating only a teeny bit and expressing my innermost feelings with occasional profanity, since it seemed to relieve some stress.
“Like Hunter Thompson,” said The Boulder.
I guess that was a subtle compliment.
While I didn’t get an iTunes update out of the exchange, I discovered that Man of Mystery really does know what men think.
Stay tuned next week for more of Rippin’s The Man of Mystery on Brown Girl. Until then check out therippinblog.com and the official Man of Mystery Facebook page!
