Beauty Fades But Red Flags Are Forever
Hey Ya’ll!! Sorry for the delay in rolling out the newsletters this month! With covid, and book editing (my least favourite part of the book writing process ugh!), and finding some family balance, things have definitely gotten away from me this month but don’t fret, I’ll be making up for it with several releases in the last final two weeks of November. Love you all!! Hope you’re all surviving and taking care of yourselves. Thank you so much for your continued support—it means the world to me <3 And without further adieu…
Fayez looks like Joe Manganiello. We meet in the summer and eat plates of tapas at a place on main where the front wall is just one big open window. The breeze keeps the sweat on my brow at bay. We laugh with each other as the restaurant fills, empties, fills, and empties again. He pays and we go for a walk around the block. Fayez towers over me and I wonder if the good smell is deodorant or cologne. Twenty steps away from being back at my car, Fayez pulls me into an embrace. We kiss long and slow against a cement wall hidden from onlookers. I float home.
On our second date we go for coffee, and he invites his friend. He wants me to meet his friends. He wants to show me off. The ease with which a fat girl forgets her common sense is like butter on hot corn. Your entire life is spent being hidden, watching the face of others to see shame, not always and not with everyone but often enough that it’s there. Even if you never tolerated it. Even if you always ended things the second you felt hidden. None of that heals the wound. None of that makes you forget. So, when a man invites his friend to come meet you, when a man wants to show you off early and with intention, you melt into every wound you’ve ever had. You do not recognize the red flag. You are too close to it. You are too blinded by the past.
By the end of the date, meeting Fayez’s friend didn’t seem that weird. They talked about soccer, and we all made jokes. His friend asked me lots of questions and made far more conversation than Fayez did, in a cute way. By the time his friend left, I couldn’t help but wonder if I now had a crush on both of them. When they both asked me to come watch them play soccer, I assured them I would (already thinking of all the fantasies I was about to have about that exact scenario going forward). After that second date, Fayez and I went back to his place and things started to lose their sheen, just a little.
The house was empty when we arrived, by which I mean that there was no one else there and within the walls of his room there was virtually no furniture. Now look here, when I say that I have empathy for anyone experiencing financial scarcity, I mean it. As a grown adult living back in my childhood bedroom with the hopes of gaining traction in my writing career, I know what it is to not have much to your name. The issue wasn’t that Fayez was living sparsely, the issue was that it was a surprise. Which, I guess, is a pretty hard thing to avoid. No one wants to hear about how you’ve barely got two nickels to rub together on a first date. His lack of bedframe made me question things he’d said on our first date. As it turns out, working for a moving company was more like helping a friend move for pizza and beer. I pulled at the threads. As it turns out, he was only recently separated, had moved here for a women living up north. Turns out it was cold, and they didn’t love each other anymore and I got the feeling he’d come all the way here from Tunisia for a sugar mamma. The irony of my financial situation made the whole thing seem laughable. But then again, maybe I was being too sensitive, too jaded, too quick to assume the worst. I tucked my concerns in my pockets for later. Fayez put on a movie, and we messed around (fully clothed, because ya’ll know I’ve stopped fucking on first dates). Did I mention he looked like fucking Joe Manganiello?!