Jennifer

In 1989 the iconic movie “When Harry Met Sally” made its way to the big screen, and later, VHS. (If you are not familiar with VHS, it is safe to say you are too young to be reading this blog.)

Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan take the leads, while debating the age-old question “Can men and women ever just be friends?”

Harry is pretty adamant that men and women can never be friends “because the sex part always gets in the way.” Sally (Meg Ryan) disagrees and whole heartedly believes men and women can be strictly friends without any sex.

I, of course, can see both sides of this. However, I am of the belief that it all comes down to “what is your intention?” More on that later.

October 2002

I had a friend, a pretty good friend in Sean. He was a nice guy, funny, good worker. We were friends. When we worked together, it felt like I was hanging out with Christin or Alphonso. Sean being the newly single guy that he was, was on the hunt for “something casual.” Now, despite whatever conclusions one may have gathered from some previous post on here, I personally, cannot do the “casual” thing. But…to each their own. He tried hard to make it work with Jessica, and in the end, I am of the belief they were just on two different pages. Jessica wanted to settle down, and Sean was determined to never get married again. This is why, all Sean was interested in was a casual relationship, which pretty much means sex with no strings attached.  If Sean were to see an attractive customer in the store, many of us would make bets on if he would come away with her number or not. (He always did.) It got to the point where I knew his “type” of girl, and it became a game of sorts to point these girls out to him, just to see if he agreed they were his type or not. (They always were.) Which really, as long as you are a female, you are his type.

I knew this about Sean, and it was okay. Our friendship was completely different from his quest to get, well, you know where I am going with this. He would go on his “dates” and the next day at work told me all about them. A part of me was intrigued. It was like being inside the mind of a guy for a moment or two. I learned a lot, and somethings I wish I never knew.

Sean was also pretty good friends with Alphonso. I mean they were roommates so they kinda had to get along, but the reality is they truly enjoyed each others friendship. This was important to me as Alphonso was my BFF, and with him being gay, I was always cautious on how straight guys would treat him, because let’s face it, sometimes straight guys act all stupid around gay guys. They automatically think the gay guy wants them and therefore gets intimidated. This was not how Sean was. Alphonso and Sean would clean the apartment together, cook together, we all would run our errands together. Never anything out of line. It was a pretty fun time. All of us were growing in our own ways, yet enjoying life.

Sean also had kids. His kids were about four years older than mine, which was also never an issue. All the kids got along very well. On occasion he would bring his kids down to play with my kids and Jessica’s son. Even Jessica and Sean had seemed to maintain a pretty good friendship after the breakup, which says a lot about both of their character. Separate, they are both pretty good people, together, they just did not work.

One night, Jessica and I decided to have a few people over for dinner and games. It would be Jessica and I, Christin, Sean, Alphonso and Jasmine-Jasmine was a mutual friend of all of us-good people. Alphonso came a little early, helping Jessica and I prepare for the night. And by “prepare” I mean he was telling Jessica and I everything we were doing wrong. Both Jessica and I just tuned him out like we always do. Jessica was in the kitchen, trying to determine if the chicken I made could be saved or not, all three kids were playing in the living room, Alphonso and I were at the dinning room table, while he was doing my makeup, naturally. All of a sudden we hear the front door open. We just assumed it was Sean, Christin or Jasmine. It was not them.

What “it” was, was a huge St Bernard dog, one that looked to be the size of a baby horse. It was at this moment that an outsider would truly get a glimpse into the personalities of Jess, Alphonso and myself. All at once, as soon as we saw the very large dog, Alphonso, while screaming a very high pitched scream,  pushes the kids to the side, runs to the bathroom to lock himself in, Jessica gets all the kids together and orders them to the back bedroom. She follows and locks her bedroom door. I of course think I have a new friend “Hi puppy! Come here, where did you come from?” The dog/horse just sits in the middle of the living room floor looking at me like I am nuts. I believe I heard Alphonso crying from the bathroom, and Jessica yelling at me to come to the bedroom, she was going to call the police, I am torn. I mean what if this dog/horse was hurt, what if someone just abandoned him? I felt bad. It was then that I had one of my brilliant ideas. I would take the chicken that could not be saved and try to make my way past the dog/horse, throw the chicken out the front door, in the hopes that Jake (yes, I already named the dog/horse) would follow. Good plan, right? Carefully, I have the chicken in the pan…”Hi little guy, are you hungry? Do you want some chicken?” Jake is giving me the good ole “side-eye” while I am slowly, slowly, ever so slowly making my way closer to the front door. “It’s okay little guy, don’t be worried, we will take care of you.” As soon as I make my way past him, with chicken in hand, Sean comes barreling through the front door, Jake is scared, starts to growl as if he ready to attack, Sean grabs the pan of chicken out of my hands while pushing me aside, just before Jake made his move…out the front door to follow the chicken. We never saw Jake again after that night, and I can only hope that he found his owners and just took a wrong turn into our apartment.

It was a good night aside from me burning dinner….and the whole Jake fiasco. Apparently while Jessica had the kids in the bedroom, she had called Sean to tell him about the large dog/horse that made his way to Apartment B-303. When Sean came in, he had a pretty good idea of what he would be dealing with. Alphonso, Jessica, Sean and me will never forget that incident. Of course we all have different memories. Alphonso thought he was going to die, Jessica thought the kids were going to die, I thought Jake was just lost and needed help, and Sean believes he came in to save the day. (Which for the record, I totally had it!)

Not too long after our little visitor, Christin and Jasmine made their way down. We enjoyed good food (Thank you Pizza Hut) good conversation, and good music (Thank you Montley Crue) At one point, we all separated and kind of did our own thing, yet we were all still “together.” This would be the time when Christin and Jessica really started to bond. Prior to this particular night, they had only really seen each other at work. It was good for them, as they both had so much similarities with their life.

At the end of the night, after everyone went home and all the kids were safely tucked in, Sean pulled me aside and asked me how I felt about giving it a shot with him. It took me a minute to register what he was asking me….but it finally clicked and I was blindsided, which seems to be a running theme with me, but blindsided none the less. I mean what? Where was this coming from? Was Harry right all along, that men and women cannot ever be just friends? Sean knew that Joe and I were in the very early stages of “talking” although nothing was official between Joe and I, I felt it was going in that direction. Why would Sean of all people now put this awkwardness out there. We had a good thing going, until we didn’t.

I needed to call Christin. She would know what to do, because at this point, even though her and I were not the best judge of character regarding our own lives, we were pretty on point about giving advice to others.

Shortly after that night, there would come a time when  Joe would get involved, and I would be forced to make a choice between a pretty good friendship and what could possibly be.