Until I Get Married

Sorry for the delay everyone, but after days of rain and “eh” weather, the sun in New York is finally out and I had to do a lot of girl watching and girl hollering. I also had to go have a free world class lunch and finish up a piece for a world-class publication.

Needless to say, I’m pretty tired, and my brain is kind of dry,  but I want to use the small amount of creative juices I have left to get into something we can all relate to, that of the stupid argument.

Whenever I get along with someone I once argued with, it always baffles me how we even got there in the first place. How did we get so upset with each other seemingly out of nowhere? What sparked it? Was it something serious? Did one of us disrespect the other to nth degree?

Sometimes, that is exactly what happened, and sometimes, it couldn’t be any further from the truth. Because the truth is, we, her and I, were arguing over something so silly, so trivial, it makes no sense how we ever ended up in a shouting match.

This was years ago, when I first moved to New York. I was a young guy trying to make my world in the magazine industry, dating a girl one more year removed from college than I. Our relationship was great. We never argued. Not ever.

Since the two of us got along so famously, we were apt to purposely agitate each other every once in a while because, well, we wanted to know what it felt like to actually have make up sex. And one day, she brewed the perfect recipe for such an occasion.

We were riding to her place on the subway. There was a brand new issue of VIBE I had with me, and in it was an article I wrote on the rapper Rich Boy. For anyone who is familiar with Rich Boy, he’s a rapper from Mobile, Alabama.

Now in this story, which was a brief write-up on him as an up-and-coming artist, I wrote the following line:

Reminiscent of vintage Cash Money, the albums Fresh-produced first single, D-Boyz, is Richs attempt to put the Souths other A on the hip hop map.

When my girlfriend at the time finished reading it, I asked her what she thought.

“I like it,” she said. “It was a good piece, but that line about the Souths other A doesn’t make sense.”

For the record, I have never been too sensitive about my work. Any woman who dates me is told she must be willing to fulfill a duty as editor of everything I write. I value the criticism. I don’t shy away from it. But when she told me the line I wrote didn’t make sense, I was slightly offended if only because I knew it was a line I worked hard to concoct and get right.

“How does it not make sense,” I asked. “Atlanta is the first A, and the second A is Alabama. Bam. Done.”

“Yeah,” she said. “But one is a city, one is a state, so it doesn’t really match up.”

“Of course it matches up, how many other A’s are down south,” I said, this time my tone a little bit more confrontational.

“Well,” she said. “There’s Augusta.”

“Augusta!?” I yelled.

“Jozen, look,” she said now getting testy and starting to speak to me like I was stupid. “You know I’m from Atlanta. So to me, there really isn’t another A period, but if you’re going to use that line, it has to be a city.”

“First of all,” I said. “I know you’re from Atlanta. This isn’t about your stupid Atlanta. Okay? This is about that line and you saying it doesn’t make sense. I know it’s a state, but it still makes sense…”

“No. It. Doesn’t!” she yelled back. “And did you just call me stupid?”

“No. I. Didn’t!” I yelled back. “But if you think that line doesn’t make sense, well then that’s stupid!”

Now the whole subway was looking at us, arguing over two places probably no one on the train had been. When we took a moment to breathe and noticed we were now everyone’s ride-home entertainment, how some folks were literally holding their headphones only inches out of their ears to hear what the commotion was, we stopped.

We didn’t speak for the rest of the ride home and the rest of the night. As a matter of fact, I think I went straight home after we got to her place. I didn’t even stay. Eventually we both agreed to disagree, but to this day the thing we both agree on is that it was one of the stupidest arguments we ever had.