And if you’re scrolling down to read a heartfelt homage to my grandfather or reasons why we should all be the change we want to see in the world like Gandhi, you must be new here. This rarely cared for blog is reserved for talking about boys, absolutely no makeup tips, and occasionally pretending I’m growing up. In keeping with stayed traditions, I present three stories of men/boys/manboys that I have met along my way who have imparted some kind of wisdom – never directly – but led me to my own epiphany.
In one interpretation of the gifts brought by the three wise men, gold is seen as a valuable, frankincense is a perfume, and myrrh is an anointing oil. Loosy Goosy as that may be, I am going to try to stick with that as a guiding theme and as a clever device to structure these vignettes chronologically. Aren’t I clever?
(Oh, and no names here have been changed, nor has permission been requested, but these are just my completely one-sided musings on my interactions with each wise man.)
Scott(?) – Gold
I think his name was Scott, it was 2007 and I met him once, and I’m not sure we were ever Facebook friends and that was a time you’d add everyone you’d ever met on Facebook. And 2007 was also the time I was reeling from my first heartbreak. You know the one: where you get really drunk in a hazing ritual in the creepy basement of your university house and weep uncontrollably in front of your ex-boyfriend (hmm just me then?). The first cut being the deepest, you think that you’ll never move on and it won’t stop hurting.
Scott and I met on a car ride from Kingston to Ottawa when I was instructed to drive the classical guitar major (more useful than a gym major?) who was playing at a reception I was attending. We didn’t really speak on the way up as he sat somewhere in the back of the van I drove, but on the way back to Kingston that night, all the other carpoolers were asleep in the back and he rode shotgun and we chatted the entire way back. I can’t recall any of the content of what we talked about, but I do remember feeling that, yes, it was possible to meet someone new, even if I had no romantic intentions towards this person at all and that not everyone in the world is going to reject me just because my ex-boyfriend did.
And now every time I strike up a really great conversation with a stranger at a party or on a plane (when I’m not being an irate business traveller), it reminds that conversation is not solely transactional and that connecting with people is something I enjoy and am good at. Back in '07 I think I had bored everyone I know around me overanalyzing my defunct relationship and being mopey all the time. So talking with someone who doesn’t know you at all means you talk less about your relationship issues. It's so freeing because you allow yourself to talk about something else, anything else. That was a valuable lesson. Thanks Scott or whatever your name is, wherever you may be.
Paul – Frankincense
Fast forward five years, a good chunk of that you can catch up on in my previous entries, and Paul is someone I’ve written about before. I could never say anything ill about him, I only ever spent time with him for a weekend (I swear I do have more than just fleeting encounters with individuals) so perhaps you could say I didn’t know him well enough. But in some way, he influenced me to move to London. That’s why he’s perfume – my encounter with him enhanced a part of me. I warned you these were stretches.
To be honest, I am not exactly sure when I decided to apply to London for business school. I was really more concerned about where I wanted to live and ended up only applying to schools in London and New York. And even though things with Paul had faded away well before my applications were due there was this distinct part of me that did wonder what it might be like if we reconnected while I lived there, as he lived in Essex. I did live in the UK for two years, and I am pretty sure I never went to Essex once.
I still have his contact number from when we were texting in Turkey (Google keeps it all!), and WhatsApp loads all your contacts to show you who also has WhatsApp and being the creep I am, I can see that his status of “Available” hasn’t changed in 2011 so I am assuming he has had the same number. All that to say that his WhatsApp display photo is of a baby girl. Maybe it did work out with woman he started seeing and decided to break it off with me who lived all the way in Canada. I’ll never know – he honestly doesn’t have Facebook.
Secretly (or not so as I announce it to the internet here), I have an email drafted to Paul in my Gmail that has sat there for over two years now with only a subject of “Hello from much closer by” that I never wrote any body text. I think about deleting it sometimes, but it’s like this relic that sits there and reminds me of how I was feeling at that exact moment (lonely and curious) and reminds me how perhaps stopping our impulses that stem from loneliness may lead to better things. Two days after I drafted that email I met the man that I’m quite likely to grow old with. We hope to, at least.
Dave – Myrrh
I met Dave over weekend in 2013, and yes I know I said that I do know people for more than fleeting encounters, but Dave has more similar parallels to Paul as well – I too learned to stop. Myrrh is associated with ancient burial rituals and Dave was a turning point for me, I was going to bury some old bad habits and start fresh. I wanted to stop chasing awful men and leave the destructive half of my twenties behind.
I did that cliché thing: I loved like I had never been hurt and I was genuinely happy. I wanted my friends to meet him; I wanted to hold his hand. These were two things that gave me anxiety before. I felt this one going somewhere good and somewhere far; as fate would have it, we were both separately moving to London to pursue individual dreams and when does that ever happen?
Fate had the last laugh, because it turns out he wanted something (or someone) completely different. I had never been figuratively punched in the gut so hard. Why hadn’t I outgrown this? Wasting my time with a man(boy) who didn’t want what I wanted. Why was I so blindsided? Hindsight being what it is, I don’t remember my raw emotional reaction accurately anymore. But the best possible thing happened to me after the breakup: I moved across the ocean and got to start all over again. No one knew me and I could be whoever I wanted to be.
Being in business school is definitely three steps back, it would been have incredibly easy to get caught up in old habits. I showed up in London with a complete “don’t touch me” look, which is great for making friends. Does it sound awful to say that Dave was like a good practice boyfriend? Maybe a Good Luck Chuck kind of situation? That’s the first and last time I will ever reference Dane Cook. More so, I learned what I needed from a partner. Besides a man isn’t what I was looking for out of my graduate education - I went for an MBA, not an MRS - but he is a very nice cherry on top.
Not that you were wondering, but just in case, I did run into Dave once while I was in London. It’s a great story (to me), ask me about it and I’ll tell it to you.
Overall, these are just three stories that I thought fit together in a nice thematic way. Not because they’re men that I liked, lusted after, and loved respectively – but I think you really can learn something that you’ll carry with you for a long time from people, regardless of gender, that you know for only a few hours, a weekend or a few months. They don’t need to be someone you’ve known your whole life, someone who is especially close to you, or even someone you respect all that much. But to all the people who I have learned something from, I am thankful that I’ve come across you in my wanderings in the world so far. And I look forward to as many wise persons as they come.
