The Only Thing Better Than You Is Me

My best guy friend in the whole world is a Sag.

That's us on the left. I can't even talk about the kid with the shirt stains!

It's both a blessing and a curse. I love him so deeply because all of my good qualities reflect right back at me. And I could slap the shit out of him at any moment because he always follows up the right thing to say with something completely ridiculous and outlandish.

Example: "J-Bird, I don't know why you don't have a boyfriend. I mean, you're so pretty, you can lose the weight!".

Do you see it? The place where he should have stopped. I see it. He's the Santino of my life. And I've stopped glazing over every time he goes too far because I realize that even though he said exactly what he meant, he didn't mean it the way I heard it. In the example above, when I asked him for clarification he said, "Just thank God you're not ugly! We can't fix that. Like if you were hit in the face? Nothing we could do".

Now, I laugh when he gets word vomit because it's hella funny. Plus, I'm one of three people that gets his jokes. I know when he's sad and make sure to say just enough to nudge him out of his funk. I mean, he's a Sag so I know he'll come out eventually but it always helps to know you've got support in your latest excursion.

He's also my travel buddy. We hit a rough patch when he went to Mykonos 5 months early and without me. I jumped so far up his ass he tasted my toe jam for a week! But then I realized that he'd just gotten the bug and he had the funds and most importantly, I probably would've done the same thing to him. It's not like Greece is going anywhere, right? So we had lunch and I paid and he knew I was sorry and I knew he was sorry and we went right back to the way things were.

That's the other thing. He totally gets my need for space. He's never hurt (for long) when I don't want to do something or go somewhere. He knows when to keep his mouth shut about my boys. And he's never yelled at me for chasing away his girls. Probably because he knows, deep down, that if she were meant to stay I wouldn't be able to scare her away so easily.

And I'm pretty sure that ALL OF THAT is why Nat thinks we'd be so perfect for each other. She's been pressing me for years to get with The Sag. And by "pressing", I mean that once a year, usually around our birthdays (because I'm 4 days older than him) she'll say, "So what are you and The Sag doing to celebrate?". I'll tell her our plans and she gets this shit-eating grin on her face that exudes the confidence that this will be the year that her big sis gets her mind right and marries the man that's just like her so she can be the cool Aunt already. But she's always wrong.

The love I have for The Sag is completely platonic. We met in a call center during the time in my life when I worked two jobs and went to school part time. He sat a whole two rows over, by himself, everyday, because he was the last from the mid-shift to leave. So for two hours after I'd get to work, he'd be in a row all alone staring out the window. And he's too fine for that. I held a mini-summit with my row and we decided to invite him over but I had to be the one to do it. It went like this:

Me: "Hey."
The Sag: "Hey."
Me: "D in my row wants to know if you date black women."
The Sag: "What?"
Me: "She thinks you're cute and if you promise not to make this awkward you can sit with us instead of by yourself for two hours every night."
The Sag: "But only because she thinks I'm cute?"
Me: "Well, it's not like we know you! You could have a horrible personality!"
The Sag: ...
Me: "Are you coming or not?"
The Sag: "Yeah. Just let me take this call."
Me: "Cool."
The Sag: "Hey?"
Me: "Yeah?"
The Sag: "I don't like D, I like L"
Me: "Whuh? Ew! You don't want her! She's hott and all but her boyfriend's a douche and she's gonna marry him anyway because he's rich. I already know you're better than that."
The Sag: "Damn."
Me: "You still coming over?"
The Sag: "Yeah." *kanye shrug* "Why not?"

See? It's a beautiful story. I will say that they year we turned 23, Nat had gotten all in my head and tequila was all in my blood stream so I thought maybe, juuuust maybe, The Sag and I could make this work. I was drunk, he was drunk, and my room was clean so I said "Let's do this!". And then he responded, "Do what?". And I was all drunk sexy and he took his shirt off and I was like "You have a fur coat! Bahahahahahhaa!". Which by the way, did you know that men with body hair are totally self-concious about it?

Anyway, he admitted that he was a virgin, I buckled under that kind of pressure, and we fell asleep laying the wrong way across my bed, over the covers, with him rubbing my back while I dry heaved. No one should start a romantic relationship on that kind of romance so we just let it be. We've never actually talked about that night and I think it's better that way. There's no underlying tensionn from it because we didn't make what would have been a major mistake.

We get to love each other in our own way and it's working for us. At least until he asked me to dinner, took me to my favorite restaurant, and said he wanted to talk...