late bloomer

My homie Down Low is having female troubles.

A little background on Down Low: In his sophomore year of high school his parents, newly divorced, decided that it would be in his best interest if he was shipped off to a reform school. They tricked him into going, using the old "we're taking a day trip" scenario.

What was boneheaded about this decision was that Low was 17 at the time, and after a year he would be able to leave the reform school on his own. In order for that particular reform program to work, a teenager would have to have been there for at least two to three years.

His parents basically threw money away by sending him off. The program had no effect upon him in terms of rehabilitation: his only vice was smoking marijuana, although Low himself has speculated that his stay at the reform school might have saved him from getting into methamphetamines, a phenomenon that rushed in and took over his former classmates nearly overnight.

But the real effect the program had on Low was that it alienated him from his family and also set back his maturation greatly. He missed out on a lot of things because of this "time out" that he was grudgingly handed.

One of those things was the normal rites and passages of horny high school kids who are beginning to date and have intimate relationships. Low never had a real girlfriend, and reform school only thwarted this goal.

So now, he has female troubles-- specifically, he is dealing with a girl who is just as immature and melodramatic as he is. And because he cares about her, he finds that he cannot simply write her off and go onto the next conquest...


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I frequently talk with Low over breakfast at Andre's, and most of the time I am chewing his ear off about my various love interests. He has always been a good listener and gave me valuable feedback many times. Now it is my turn to return the favor.

This is not as easy as it seems. Low has never pontificated at length on any girls in the past, so it is surprising to hear him express profound emotions for someone. He talks so much about her that we don't talk about anything else. I get annoyed by this, but then I remember all the times I vented about Amy Coates or Eve or Monique or even Mary Jane, and I take a deep breath and open up my ears.

He quit smoking pot and cut down on cigarettes; he has started writing love songs on his 12-string guitar-- Low is a brilliant guitarist but has never been able to write a decent song... until now.

He is a late bloomer, and this is the first true love he has ever found. He met this girl online, and their initial relationship was far from romantic: they collaborated on an X-rated webcam site and made a lot of money getting credit card charges from lonely rich men who paid to masturbate to pretty girls on the Internet.

Somewhere along the line, Low and this girl became friends, then lovers, and now... now they have that love-hate ambivalence that passes for passion in this day and age.


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I don't know how helpful I have been, but suffice it to say that I've had my share of crazy girls wrecking my world, and so I speak to him from experience and not just macho posturing.

He felt like a "pussy" for calling her after he said he wouldn't. I reminded him of my troubles with Eve earlier this year, how she wasn't talking to me for weeks and I still kept leaving messages on her answering machine, letting her know that (whenever she was ready to talk) I was sorry for being an ass and I wanted to make sure she was OK.

Low's girl is taunting him with threats of another guy who will treat her right. All this means is that she found a simp who has a lot of money and will spend it on her. But she knows that this guy doesn't love her the way Low does, and Low knows that she is using this sucker to make him mad.

Meanwhile, Low is still seeing other girls, who are less drama but don't compare to the feelings he has for this one girl. It's like a Smokey Robinson song come to life.

It seems so simple, doesn't it? All they have to do is lay down their respective arms and embrace each other. But it's never that simple, and that's because human emotions cloud our reasoning. It becomes a power trip with both sides refusing to roll over.

I told him he needs some time away from her, that he will know her for a long time and they will never be too far from each other. I think of how Eve spent nine years with a guy that she fell out of love with two years into it; I think of Amy Coates, who is married with a child but who will never forget the impact I had on her; I think of all these women that I have known and loved, and how I never really stopped loving them-- I just moved on to other people when the romance ran out.

Low hasn't had the opportunities to explore a meaningful relationship and its attendant baggage. But if you ask me, he's actually growing up a bit. A year ago, Low wouldn't have shed a tear over any girl. I don't see his soul-searching as a negative thing at all.

Painful, yes, but negative? Hardly.

In fact, it confirms what I've always suspected about him: that underneath all the bluster and braggadoccio, Down Low (like me, like many of my friends) has a heart, and hides it to protect it from the slings and arrows of this heartless era. But ultimately, he is an old-fashioned Romantic, and he is an artist, and he has deeper feelings than just the standard "Findum Fuckem And Flee" mentality that pervades the landscape of the male psyche these days.

They'll be OK, because they are decent people, despite their taste for the lowlife and all that entails. Who says pornographers and drug dealers don't have soft sides? They're human beings too, and their plights are no different than that of a respectable young married couple or the affairs of the upper-class power elite.

We all bleed, we all cry, we all feel joy when the person we love is in our arms... we all wear different uniforms and march to the individual beats of various drummers, but we all share that longing for love, that yearning for something that feels real, something that transcends the present, something that lasts forever and burns eternally...

Today is the first day of Autumn. It is the beginning of The Fall...