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My post from the other day, or well, the lack thereof, produced some interesting questions that people are dieing to know, so I am here to oblige! Today’s question comes from Paulie, who wanted to know about how James and I first met. So here it is:

I used to work at Aid Atlanta, and while I was there, I worked as an outreach worker. This basically means I would go to Red Chair, hang out, hand out condoms, and do a little “announcement” of our services and what not during the drag show. Anyway. I was sitting there with my little box o’ condoms, and James was sitting across the room obviously eyeing me, and while I thought he was cute, I was in a relationship at the time, so I was definitely going to be a good boy. James finally came over to talk to us (there was another guy out with me that night doing outreach as well), and was asking some questions about how to reach his kids (since he can’t talk to them as a teacher). We talked a little about that, and I gave him an Aid Atlanta card, and he went on his way.

Then, later that week, my boss calls me giggling, into his office. He then shows me this email that was sent to the main website’s information account, and it was something to the degree of, “My name is James, I met your outreach worker Dwayne the other night…” blah blah blah. (Yep, that’s right, he misspelled my name! Huge pet peeve of mine, but I digress). The point was, that I apparently had made an impression on this boy, and he had come a calling. That’s when the picking on me started.

From that, I was instructed to email him back and get him the information that he needed. That was after all, doing my job. I was also the joke for a while in the office, it was, “when you do outreach, are you working, or working it, girl?!?!”. When I emailed James back I immediately told him I had a boyfriend as to let him know what the deal was with that, because I am an honest and good boy. I would never cheat on anyone, and that is the honest truth. He didn’t seem deterred by that too much, and a few email exchanges produced his phone number. While I thought he would be cool to hang out with, I was not even going to go there, because, I was thinking of my boyfriend at the time, and thought it would be shady. So I did the next natural thing, I placed the ball in his court, and gave him my number. I seriously doubted that he would ever call, but low and behold, one day on the way home from class, and my phone rings with a number I don’t recognize. It’s James. And we proceeded to talk for over an hour and a half (which he will gladly tell you how much more his phone bill was because of the call, and say, “see, that’s how much I liked you”). Turns out, we had a ton of stuff in common! Which didn’t matter, because I had a boyfriend. So we fast became best friends. Weird huh? I even tried to hook him up with my roommate to downplay the shadiness factor this had. He hung out with me and my boyfriend, and after a while, he was just one of the boys. We. Were. Friends.

Well, a few months later, I didn’t have the boyfriend anymore, and in my horrible break up phase, I was a mean drunk, and took a lot of that out on James. I gave him shit about every boy he dated, looked at, or talked about. Looking back, it is obvious that it was because I wanted to be that boy, but at the time, I was in such a bad place emotionally, that it wasn’t even on my radar. That is, until one faithful Monday afternoon, we went to our regular drinking happy hour, and something slipped out. We were all talking, and you know how groups have several smaller conversations going on at once, and my friend Josh just says to me, “isn’t that right duane, you totally knew this whole time, didn’t you?”. Well, being me, I usually jump in without missing a beat, so I replied with, “pshya! Of course I knew.” James looks horrified, and in true James-style, says, “you knew that I liked you this whole time, and didn’t say anything?” Thanks babe, you totally gave yourself away without a fight. So that is pretty much what planted the seed in my head; I realized that he really did like me, and I started realize my feelings for him.

One night while we were out, I was teasing him, and I basically said, “we should just have sex. What do you think?” He turned red. I turned red. But we were both obviously wanting to do it. And so a couple of weeks later, we did. And it wasn’t weird at all. (which was kind of weird… it was supposed to be weird!) But the agreement was that we were to hook up over a couple of weeks, because James refused to let that be a one time thing. I was cool with that, so it began. Basically, we hung out that next day, and went to friend’s house for dinner that night, when my friend Josh (the same one mentioned above) pointed out that James and I were a little closer and more chemistry-ish than usual. A phone call on the way home revealed to Josh that we had indeed hooked up, and were planning to again. He revealed that we were dating. I insisted that we weren’t. Before I hung up, I admitted that we were dating. That was more than two and half years ago, and things have been going great ever since.

And that’s how I met and fell in love with the best man ever!