My Respect For Her: Like a Tire With…

Like a tire with a slow leak, my respect for her had dwindled.

Like A Tire With A Slow Leak

Do you still respect me?

The question seemed easy enough to answer. Yet I knew the answer, rather, the truth, would break her heart. And I knew I didn’t want to do that. So instead of telling her the truth, I did what any decent, self-respecting man with even a shred of common sense, intellect, and love for his own life would do: I lied. Okay, I didn’t really lie; I didn’t tell her something that wasn’t true. In fact, I didn’t tell her anything at all; I just redirected her question by asking another question.

“Have I done anything to show you that I don’t?” I inquired, hoping this “answer” would suffice. She pondered her response for a moment and said with something I, to this day, can’t remember; I just knew that I was off the hook. And that was all I needed to know.

But the question still gnawed at me. This wasn’t one of those “let-me-think-about-it” questions; no, I knew the answer long before she even asked it. Like a tire with a slow leak — one you don’t know is there until you’ve let it sit for a while — my respect for her had dwindled. It wasn’t completely demolished, but it certainly wasn’t where it used to be. And the hole that lead to the leak? My assurance that, if I wanted, I could have it, or more accurately, her.

I wasn’t interested in her when we first met. She was nice enough, but I just looked at her as cool people, as a friend. I don’t know what she thought about me — other than her surprise at this white boy’s high level of comfort in a room full of black folks — and I could’ve cared less, yet as we started hanging out more frequently, I could pick up hints, some subtle, some not, that she was into me. Perhaps it was only because she liked me and I knew it, or because we clearly had chemistry, but whatever the reason, I started to like her. Probably more than I’d care to admit.

Likely because of my abundance of female friends and because she often accused me of being a player (which I’m not), we developed this joke that she was my “Sunday chick” (due to the fact that we would often hang out on Sundays). We had fun — no doubt. We laughed a lot, ate good food nearly every time, and had good conversation. And we flirted. A lot.

Soon, we were probably in deeper than we realized. We would kiss and cuddle; nothing too serious, but serious enough for feelings — deeper on her part than on mine — to develop. The whole thing happened so naturally, so organically, that we made one crucial mistake: we forgot to define why we were in this friendship — a friendship that, more often than not, seemed like a relationship. A relationship with no title. And inevitably, I found myself in a place where I was forced to examine if this relationship (or whatever you want to call it) was really something I wanted to pursue. Did I like her or was it the idea of her?

I didn’t want to admit it, but it wasn’t her; it was the idea of her. But I enjoyed the idea so much that I didn’t want it to stop. So I procrastinated; I put it off. I avoided confronting the issue. I know I shouldn’t have. But I did. Then one night it came to a head. She’d had enough. She wanted to know what we were doing — well, some of that she knew — and why we were doing it — that was the real question. Not only that, but she didn’t want me to view her as one of those girls. That’s when she asked me the six words that I’d lie about: Do you still respect me?

And you know the rest.

{For more from Stuart McDonald, check out his blog on Elev8 and follow him on Twitter}

[Author's Note: This piece originated from an English assignment in which we had to discuss a big lie that we had told. And in case you're wondering about this relationship, we have since discussed the issues and are on the same page. Granted, part of what brought me to that was having to write this piece, but hey, it's all good now.]