pictures and a thing.

You see, Ben was the sort of fellow to take note of everything you said, saving up for a grand romantic gesture somewhere in the future.  Say you watched a movie together, and in that movie a couple sat down to enjoy a candle-lit dinner.  Say you absentmindedly made a remark to the effect of, "Ah, dinner by candle light.  How romantic."  Well, not too long after this, you could count on Ben to surprise you with exactly the kind of dinner you had barely even noted desire for yourself.  Candles and all.

The trouble with Ben was that he was much akin to the weather in Spring.  What I mean by that is you could never be sure what temperament you might find him in that day.  He was unpredictable, petulant.  Unstable, if you will.  He wasn't the type you could bring along to a family party without feeling as if you needed to tend to him the entire time.  The guests wouldn't find him especially approachable or easy to talk to, mainly because he wasn't.  At the end of the night while on your drive back home, you could count on him to ramble on about how sorely put out he was over something your dear old Aunt Bessy had said.  Even though you're sure she meant nothing by it at all.  The thing about Ben was, he needed protection.  And so all of the romance came at a price.

And then there was James.  What was certain about James is that you could take this shiny young man anywhere.  He would thrive at that family party of yours.  You could go off on your own for considerable amounts of time and he would hardly notice your absence.  By the end of the night, he would have charmed his way into the pumping vital parts of anyone he came into contact with.  And he most likely would have learned things about your dear old Aunt Bessy that you never in your life would have imagined.

I know, you feel positively sold, but now for the catch.  James was the type who most likely wouldn't have heard your comment about the candle-lit dinner in the first place because he was too busy thinking about how great his pectoral muscles looked protruding forth from inside the shirt he was wearing that night.  And you probably couldn't help but agree about the shirt and the pectoral muscles, which would probably make this all the more infuriating.  He was the sort of fellow for which you could only have low expectations if you wanted to be satisfied.  You took what you could from him, and couldn't anticipate anything further without ending up vastly disappointed.  Sure, there may have been the occasional text complimenting the outfit you had worn on a date with him a few hours previous.  And yes, he would make you laugh and you'd be tempted to think that this is a thing between only you two- this laughter.  But you'd have to keep reminding yourself that it most certainly was not.  That he just had a talent for making people feel special.  It had nothing at all to do with you.


And so, that's how I might describe my romantic past: Picking poison.