The Story Of...

We spend our lives living by the stories we hear around us. In ancient times, elders would tell younger children all sorts of myths and fables about dragons, evil spirits, and curses in order to keep them in line, out of mischief. Now that we’re a little older, these stories contain actual humans, and, as we keep growing old, they will have a long list of different names attached to them—Miguel the prince, Sunny the warlock, Nicholas the troll. But why do we believe those stories we hear? Are we so discouraged by modern day realities of life and love that we need story sedatives to help us get by? Like the one about the girl who dials the wrong number only to have a somewhat attractive-sounding man pick-up, later realizing after a two-hour conversation it was her soul mate. Yes, yes, we have all heard that one. I think it happened to Ryan’s friend of a friend.

In this game called dating, do we look for such stories for inspiration rather than fear? And once we master that fear, and put a name to the characters in our fables and myths, are they really what they appear to be? Or just a fragment of our imagination of what we hope it is or will become?

It was a beautiful Sunday morning, one of those bittersweet ones that only come along once a year the week before school starts. Everything was as it should be: Kevin was finally at peace and happy with being single; Amanda was talking to her on-again-off-again interest Chris, but with minor revisions to the script: Ryan was moving to Waterloo for school, and I was actually seeing someone. And on top of all this, it was my birthday.

I had been seeing this guy for a few weeks now. Tall, shaved head, on his way to being well built that he had arms the size of my thighs—but, again, with one minor revision: he was bisexual.

“So you’re seeing a bi guy is what you mean to tell us,” interrupted Kevin on our drive to my birthday bash.

It was no surprise Kevin reacted this way. I had spent the majority of my dating life up to that point hating on bi-sexual men, calling them the thieves from the case of the missing cookies from the cookie jar story, always taking one too many cookies. But this time it was different, he actually wanted more than just my cookie.

I knew it was different, it had to be different, and I had to make that clear before Kevin and Ryan took me back in time. “It doesn’t matter if he’s bi or not. I am through with looking at people in a black and white sort of way, maybe this will turn out to have a different story than all the others.”

Enter Ryan. “Oh, and what’s that story? The only possible plots for you and this bi guy are: he fucks you, he fucks you over and over again, or he just fucks you over. And to throw in some juicy drama: he never calls you again, and, this detail is essential to every bi guy story, he has a girlfriend.”

Surprisingly, he got that story from me. And so my current fling came to be called BiGuy.

But maybe Ryan was right. Was I just trying to create my own story to block out what seemed to be the inevitable truth? We all knew, as we sat there in silence, that the truth was that he would be gone by the next weekend and this would be one for the books.

The next week, after a month of talking to (dating, seeing, chilling with—whatever we were doing) BiGuy, I found myself center stage in his humid basement apartment. I was five for five; five visits to his house: five foreplay sessions. The tension was there. I had to have him. The fact that I kept him on the foreplay gear made me a little worried that my feelings were starting to run a bit deeper than anticipated.

“So what did you want to do,” he asked in a cool, calm, collective kind-of-voice. And so I pictured a little blurb from Cosmo’s “What He Really Means” saying ‘So wanna fuck?”

I casually suggested we watch a movie, by which I really meant: ‘Let’s fool around and then fuck.’ I was determined to prove my emotions were not about to get the best of me and I had to give it one last go before the summer ended. Even if he didn’t call me again, it would be a write-off.

And the casual movie turned into a casual encounter twenty minutes later. I was six for six. After our intense make out session, I rolled over on my stomach to look BiGuy in the face. I knew he was about to say something.

“Listen, I have to tell you something.” Here it was, the potential end of my story. But I had broken the mould, it had gone on for a repeated six chapters. “I really like spending time with you, and I know in the beginning it was all about fucking around and having fun. But with you, you make me feel good.” Was he actually saying this? Or was my mind playing tricks on me again. I nodded in amazement.

“I used to say I was bi to conform to an image I had, but now I think I know what I am and I understand myself better. Do you get what I’m saying?”

I had no idea what he was saying, but it sounded good, like something you would expect an “I love you” to come after. Now I was being extreme. Continue BiGuy.

“So what I am trying to say is that…” he hesitated. What is it? What is it that you’re trying to say! “I want to be with you.”

‘He wants to be with me?’ I thought. Or was this my mind playing tricks on me yet again.

And he continued. “And I know I said I didn’t know what I wanted, but the past few times we’ve been together, this week specifically, made me realize that I’m certain I want to get to know you better, just you and me. And this does not mean that I’m into guys, or girls, but that I’m into you.”

Wow. Was that not the best speech ever made for a fairytale or what? It was everything I wanted to hear, but not anything I wanted to believe.

In a world where Snow White meets her prince, Sleeping Beauty meets her prince, and Cinderella…meets her prince, I found it hard to believe that I would ever meet my prince, let alone a bi prince.

The next day, as the second week of school got into full swing, I told Amanda and Kevin the story over lunch, and Ryan via MSN. Their reactions had been similar to my own. No one had ever heard of the reformed bi guy, let alone their belief that the first one would be my BiGuy.

So I got to thinking. Maybe those fairytales and fables told by elders had some element of truth to them after all. And as for my friends and I, maybe we were too busy living with lost battles and stories of broken hearts that we couldn’t dare believe that miracles could happen. As they say, you cannot move forward until you acknowledge that things are no longer the way they were. Maybe that’s only true of certain things.

Perhaps there is a myth waiting to become reality in all of us after all? Or maybe we’re all just princesses keeping our princes in the wings until we’re ready to make them think they’re saving us? Either way, maybe that girl who found her soul mate in a wrong number is living happily ever after somewhere—past, present, or future.

From now on, I think I’ll be the one writing my story of love. I might not be living happily ever after just yet, or ever for that matter, but one thing is certain: I will forever be known as the friend’s friend who found something more than just a few fast fucks and a bad lesson in a bi guy once upon a time.