R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Find out what it means to me.

You know when you get to that point in your life you have much to say, but can’t seem to get it all out? Yep, that’s me right about now.

I started school Monday, in the midst of a hot spell… I loved the 100+ degree weather… it was soothing to my soul and reminded me of better days cruising through Palm Springs. But, alas, I was instead sitting unfocused in various Business Ethics [insert oxymoron joke here] and Black Studies classes.

As much reading as I have to accomplish, and the fact that my Business class already had an exam (yes, in the second class of the term, gorgeous I tell you), really school isn’t the biggest concern on my mind this last week.

I received a phone call at 3am Sunday morning while I was writing my “woe is me” post. I didn’t initially hear the phone ring, but when seeing it was Da Bod I decided to call him back.

I hadn’t spoken with Da Bod since I left Laguna Beach. At my “going away” he went down to have a smoke with Lalo and didn’t return to my apartment for the remainder of the night. One of my last nights in town, he didn’t say good-bye to me and slept with my “best friend”.

The guy that 18 months ago I was convinced I was going to have a future with… and my “best friend” fucked him. I was pissed. It’s not like this was a surprising reaction either. The last two male friends of mine I had brought around her, she ended up hooking up with. I would normally not mind, but she did this without even discussing any of it with me. I told her (both times) I just needed communication about these things, and to not be surprised about them.

Regardless of how personal you like to keep your life, if you begin talking, emailing, corresponding, dating, sleeping or just sucking the cock of anyone that you might have met through me, you better fucking give me a heads up about it, prior to it happening.

I require loyalty from my friends. I will be true-blue loyal to you until the end if you pay me that courtesy in return. I will lie by your hospital bed side for weeks. I sat with Lalo for weeks that became months through tears and anger while she got over her ex. That is what a friend does.

Da Bod has made several comments over the last year about how I needed to introduce him to one of my girlfriends after he followed me to SoCal. I never would, and I told him that I wouldn’t. I explained to him that none of my friends would hook-up with him anyway, no friend of mine would. That’s what friends do. Exes are completely off-limits.

So I called Da Bod back in the wee hours of Sunday morning. He was laughing and said that he was just hanging out at Lalo’s (“Yep, we’re hanging out, surprise!”). I told him I had to go and immediately got off the phone. I was sick to my stomach. I have no desire to be with Da Bod ever again, however I don’t want my friends fucking him. I don’t think that is too much to ask.

Monday I [*gasp*] left my phone over at JP’s. It was too late to return and get it, and as I had school near her Tuesday morning I figured I would just go and pick it up then. JP called me that night and said that Da Bod had called. She was pissed about the situation between him and Lalo and said that she wanted to text him back “lose my phone number”. I thought it funny and told her to go ahead.

She didn’t answer my phone for the remainder of the night, even though he called countless times before she turned it off. I had seven voicemail messages and a couple text messages when I retrieved my phone the following afternoon. Lying out by the pool JP and I listened to the messages that rapidly downward spiraled from “What the fuck was that about, I am going to call you until you answer” and “We don’t understand why you are acting this way” [they are a “we” already?] to “If you are in bed and that’s why you are not answering your phone, then fine… but if you know I am calling and you are ignoring me, then you are being fucking stupid and fuck you.” The joys of prescription pill popping and drinking… the insanity that I don’t miss, at all.

One of the last messages he left me was left late Tuesday morning. “I woke up on the toilet after passing out there for three hours, and Lalo was passed out sitting upright on her couch. Isn’t that funny?” Nothing reminds me more that I am over him than hearing that he, while 30, is still blowing up his Monday nights trying to relive the college days he never finished. (I can talk down about not finishing college since I have been in school for a solid three days now.)

Last night around midnight he sent a text to me, while I was trying to prepare for my morning exam, “I have talked to my family and they are very disappointed in you, as am I”.

I finally called him for the first time this morning. I was shaking as I left a message telling him that he needed mental help with his drug induced state, but I never even had my phone the other evening as he left the abundance of crazy messages.

He called me back and said that he should have assumed that I didn’t have my phone as I would have wanted to get this misunderstanding resolved immediately. I called him back and left a lengthy message about how pissed I actually was about him and Lalo hanging out, but they actually deserve one another if this is going to be their behavior. I added that I had no desire to rekindle this friendship and that it was over. Good-bye. I know I added some extraordinarily mature “fuck yous” and the like in the message, but I decided I could no longer have people that treated my heart so flippantly in my life.

So today I said good bye to Da Bod, who has been in my life for the last six years, and Lalo who had been a fun friend this last year. It’s just not worth it. I am loyal, but I am also not willing to be lenient with things important to me… such as basic respect. Is it really that difficult to comprehend?