Enter: Toad Boy ? PostModern Muslima

It is October. I left my marriage eleven months ago. ?A few weeks ago, I told the Prof to just go because I?m just done with it. ?The day afterwards, I sat on the floor in the aisle of my local Barnes-N-Nobles, and looked at the bottom shelf where two books of mine sat. I have to books in bookstores across America, I thought, and I?m sad and feel like an unlovable loser.?

I started to cry. People looked at me funny.?

There is a part of me ? a large part ? that feels I need to be alone and just focus on my writing. But there is another part of me that says, Girl, you need to know what it feels like to have a real boyfriend. Not a pretend one, or an emotionally distant one, but someone who digs you in every way possible, because you deserve it. It is time.

I?d make du?a after my prayers and ask Allah (swt) to move something else into the vacuous space shaped by the past eleven months, or to make me content with the vacancy.?

Two weeks after I told the Prof to just go, and deep in the Mississippi delta, I ran into Toad Boy.?

***

There was this weekend in a small town in Mississippi (the fact that I was this particular State at all is a story into itself). ?I was in town for a conference concerning the weird hobby I have. I was speaking at this event, along with an aging rock star bassist who produces cheesy movies for a cable network and a few retired reality TV stars.?

Yeah, I know. Weird, right?

Toad Boy showed up. For some reason, I thought he was a journalist wanting to do a story on me, or else I?d never agreed to have dinner with him. I didn?t realize that he was a research scientist, a Ph.D. and all (he is an ecologist who studies amphibians, hence the moniker, ?Toad Boy?) until we were in his truck heading to the only three-star restaurant in town (his choice).?

He informed me that he was a foodie. That scored major points and compensated for his Texan upbringing. However, the fact that he is from Austin made me considerably more comfortable with the Texas part.?

What I found out within the first ten minutes:

• He wasn?t a journalist
• He ended a cross cultural relationship around the same time I did.
• He just turned a year older and had a hard time dealing this year?s birthday in his post-relationship reality.
• He is white, like me, but after spending seven years with someone from a different culture, he no longer feels completely white.?
• Like me, he doesn?t know what parts of this reality to keep, to discard, and how to figure it in with any new relationships.
• And, like me, he is unsure if he wants to date a woman from a different culture again, even though he understands that he no longer has much in common with normal white people.

While I?ve lamented over an emotionally distant, esoteric Prof the past several months, Toad Boy had an equivalent relationship with a co-worker. He told his friend how he felt, just as I had told the Prof my feelings, and she did not respond likewise.?

Holy shit. How is it possible that I?d run into someone like this in some backwater town in the poorest State in the country? A sophisticated, well-educated foodie who has spent the past eleven months dealing with the exact life sound track as mine??

Later, we joined the aging rocker and a few others at a dive bar. The aging rocker was hitting on me in the most fabulous of fashion, essentially trying to cock block Toad Boy over shots of whiskey and a daring suggesting that Toad Boy keep the rocker?s gun in his truck. (The gun, otherwise, remained hidden somewhere in the rocker?s pants. What a metaphor.) ?I understood the rocker was hitting on me because he was being obvious, but I had no idea Toad Boy?s thoughts on the matter. We were too busy intellectualizing and having deep and meaningful conversation for me to pick up any sexual tension.?

Until he drove me back to the hotel, that is.

I didn?t want the conversation to end. I mean, I was really enjoying just talking to this guy. We had so much in common. ?So I bit my lip and acted all shy in trying to figure out a way to keep the conversation going without him thinking I was inviting him back to my room for something else.?

Then, he said, ?Come here.?

And, just like that, he kissed me.?

It was sweet, delicate, and simple. It was a honest, spontaneous kiss, and those are always the best kind.?

Now what, you ask? Oh, we?ve been skyping a lot. Next week, we start reading Junot Diaz?s newest book together, ?This is How You Lose Her ? ha! ??as we both figure out where to go from here. Because we are going somewhere. We just don?t know where yet.?

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Source: http://postmodernmuslima.wordpress.com/2012/10/14/enter-toad-boy/

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