Golden rule

The reason I am writing this blog is maybe it would help my male readers... Hopefully 

I met this gal once, she's nice, brunet, tall, and above all very strong character (my type exactly), however, things between me and her were going perfectly fine, she used to spend few days during the week at my place, and I used to spend few days of the next week at her place.

She's too much into art and paintings, so one day I was driving back home and I saw a sign for a free gallery opening, I right away grabbed a broken pencil from my console's cup holder and wrote the address down on the ATM receipt and I still remember that receipt showed my $29.42 balance.

Not enough to take her out to a dinner I'd actually be okay with taking her to, but hey, free gallery, so I rushed home, and we agreed to leave at evening time.

Now, bear with me since I am gonna draw you a picture of the situation.

"I'm always looking for an excuse to wear that black dress," she says to me, applying a few lines of mascara in the rearview mirror to dark eyelashes already thick enough to lash a raft with.

"I'm always looking for an excuse for you to wear that black dress, too." I said, she laughs and her mascara wand slips down the side of her eye and leaves a black strip down the side of her face like a strip of interstate.

"Look what you made me do!" she says. She points a finger to the mark and smiles. "Look where your flattery got me! A literal black mark.

“Her giggle ring through the car as she wipes her face clean.

"This better be some damn good art."

"Probably not as good as the art you just made on your face." I said, She miles and tosses a playful punch at my shoulder.

We arrived, parked the car and I rushed to open the vehicle door for her. Oh yes I forgot to mention that I dressed to match her, too, light gray suit, black shirt with enough starch to be considered a potato, no tie. Just badass enough to get away with it, but not enough to look like I tried too hard. (Between me and you, I did try too hard). Enough chest hair is peeking out my shirt like a Bond bad character fingers on a building's ledge in the third act, and my sunglasses are just warped and smudged enough to make me look like you're doing a David Caruso impression. Yeeeeeeeeaaaaaaah indeed.

The two of us stroll between dark halls and decorated walls, examining pictures I don't really understand and statue that’s visual completely puzzle me, like I am reading the Upanishads in Sanskrit.

These images and shapes mystify me like black magic and I am terrified that I'll be exposed as a fraud.

My philistine nature and inability to comprehend what everyone else around me is, these people wearing tan linen suits and black turtlenecks and who have beards that are more landscaped than they are trimmed and who are using terms like "impasto" and "spectrum," they'll all point and laugh.

And for a moment, with this inability to fit in this place, a horrible idea that she'll leave me with that guy that looks like a hobo, I know, the guy with the mangy "ironic" (I put it in quotes because it's not irony, it's hypocrisy) mustache and the skinny jeans and the stupid boat shoes and fedora that make him look like an anachronistic 1940s newsboy and they'll have beautiful, artistic children with full hairlines and bright smiles that they won't utilize because brooding is like super cool.

But she locks her fingers between mine like a subway line and my worried mind is eased.

Until I see That Painting.

It's not that I am familiar with the artist (coz I am not) or that I've seen the painting before (I haven't) or that I know a damn thing about composition (I don't),

But it's because that girl in the painting? The model? The tall, thin girl with the Empire-State-Building-high cheekbones and the chin-length hair?

I used to date her, didn't I?

OMG I did, that's my ex-girlfriend, thrown upon canvas in acrylic paint, a colorless representation of where I spent my mornings and nights not 365 days ago. And here I am, lining hand-in-hand with this gorgeous shoulder-length brunette in the black flats and the black dress and with the black eyelashes,

Forcing out the idea that I was ever with anyone else, and there's a modernist representation of my previous paramour.

She sees that I hesitate in front of the painting, by the way. I couldn’t help it, and she's spent enough time with me to know that something's up.

"What about that painting makes you hesitate?"

I pause. What the hell am I supposed to say?

"I dated her," I say, pointing to the piece.

"The painting?"

"The model."

"Really?" She sounds skeptical.

“Yeah." I take a deep breath to both emphasize my sincerity as well as give myself a second to allow the intensity of my feeling to shine through.

"This is weird, huh." I said

"Doesn't have to be," she says, brushing hair behind earlobes.

"We both have our own histories, you know? We've both been around places."

"That's true." I said

She pauses, still holding my hand but dropping my digits' connection to waist-level.

"Did you love her?" She asked

"I don't know. Maybe." I take a sip from my museum-provided complimentary Cranberry Lemonade.

"How do you quantify that?" I continued

"Did you want to be with her all the time?" She replied

"Yeah, but I want to be with my old dog all the time. Not really the same thing."

And for a moment I started wondering what kind of dog the two of us would get.

My brain decides upon a chocolate lab: just energetic enough to be good for walking, but quiet enough to sleep in me bed.

Because my assumption that the two of us (three of us?) will have a bed. Because I am an optimist.

"I don't know," she says,

"But that's interesting." She removes a roll of Wild Cherry Life Savers from her dress's pocket and tosses one into an open mouth.

She points a finger at the painting before me. "Did she look just like that?"

"Kinda," I answer. "Her hair was a tiny bit longer, though."

"Was she pretty? She asks.

 What am I supposed to say to that

I'd be lying if I said no," I say, praying that the whole honesty-is-the-best-policy thing holds true.

"But there's a reason we didn't work out."

"What was that?"

My disclosure was a mistake. I should've held that particular balance between honesty and withholding.

"We just weren't a good fit." My ability to distill a nearly-6-months-long relationship into four words and lightening my conscience.

"Do you think we're a good fit?" she asks, her hand, still in mine, shying away as she pretends to examine a nearby sculpture of a man in a boat.

"What if your next girlfriend in a few years or whatever sees a picture of me at a gallery opening?"

"Then she'd surely be incredibly jealous of that eyes of yours, that hair, beautiful smile" I say, a fingertip drifting toward the dark brown locks dripping from her scalp like a merlot faucet.

"Because she's got nothing on it. As the painting clearly indicates."

"I flatterer." She kisses my cheek and makes remember that my kindness is no story.

"How many people have you been with?"

"What do you mean, 'been with?'"

"You know what I mean." She pauses just long enough for me to not be able to get away with pretending otherwise.

"I don't remember, and does it matter?

"I have been with two, actually." She said

"How nice it is for you, I didn't ask tho." I said

"The world's full of such gals" she says, turning around into my direction, giving me the LOOK. "It's up to us to recognize them." She continued

"That's pretty optimistic of you."

"I'm a positive kinda woman." She lays a hand on the back of my neck and brushes it like a watercolor.

"Do you think we're gonna be good?"

"What do you mean, 'good?'"

"Just in a general sense." She said

I toss a piece of museum-provided brownie into my mouth. I chew and swallow and immediately regret the time wasted doing so.

"Yeah, I think so. We could be, anyway."

"Yeah, but why it took you so long to answer my question" she says,

"It didn't, but I was eating"

And for a sudden escalading the situation

"you regret leaving her, right?"

"Who?" I asked

"The model in the painting" she replied

"What are you talking about?"

YOU haven't noticed yourself, it took you like 5min to replay any question about her, like you are regretting leaving her"

"What are you talking about; I don't regret that at all"

"You are still in love with her I can feel that, well go and have fun with her"

"Can we just go back now?" I said

"Go back yourself, I am going my place"

And since I am still trying to figure out women, till eventually I decided to stop that and get along with whatever comes to their minds and follow the golden rule.

With women, when in doubt, cornered or puzzled, apologize.

Don't think about who's wrong and right, just apologize and leave the judging till other times... trust me