lil' bitta gangsta

bro's before ho's.

thats what we used to say to one another... in like the 6th grade.

and for those of you who never ACTUALLY heard this in the 6th grade, it basically means that girlfriends are for fun, but guys are friends for life.

(thats right. we called you ho's.) ha! - i mean c'mon! we were in the 6th grade!

so thats what we said. and you know what... we said it and we meant it.

we said it and we meant it, at least until we realized something. we said it and we meant it until we realized (as many of us quickly did) that girlfriends do not have cooties (despite the rumor)... but they DO have some 'advantages' that boys do not.

so much for bro's before ho's.

after that it was all downhill. it was the beginning of the end. talk about the downfall of men. thirteen years later and we still TALK tough, but we know better. as soon as a woman enters the picture... its game, set, match. your boy is already out the door, and handcuffed to the bed... with her in it.

which (quite frankly) isnt such a bad place to be. in fact we've all been there before.
weve all been there, and we loved every minute of it. its fair to say that we never had a chance.

(because you gotta love the handcuffs.) ha!

obviously 'bro's before ho's' never worked - even when we were asexual pre-pubescents. ha! but occassionally we forget - we forget and we assume that the rule is alive. alive and well. (almost like elvis) and thats when we get burned.

i was never more aware of this than when i broke up with an old girlfriend. at the time she was the coolest. we did everything together. we were fully integrated - she was my life and i was hers. my friends were her friends and her friends were my friends.

and then we broke up.

and i woke up.

oh wait - no... only my friends were her friends.

i could care less about her friends. but nothing is a stronger kick in the balls than waking upto realize that your friends arent just your friends - they're HER friends too. they still want to hang out with your her even though you're broken up - even though you cant stand the sight of one another.

she was everywhere. i couldnt do anything with my friends because she was always with them (or should i say... because they were always with her).

what a ho.

i thought that it was just 'understood' that her friends are hers. and mine are mine. its like a divorce. whatever she had beforehand she gets to keep. the same goes for me. apparently she never got the memo. it got alot messier when she started sleeping with an old friend of mine. in my old room. in my old bed.

what a fuckin' ho. (ha!)

eventually i got over it. getting over her was easy. getting over my friends was alot (alot) harder. it was a necessary but nasty burn.

and ever since then ive been very precise about my friendships. ive been very controlled. which isnt necessarily a big deal. im multi-faceted. i appeal to many different groups. they are all good people and great friends. but ive always kept them seperate from one another. no blind dates. no random hookups. no mixing and matching. my friends are just that... my friends. they're not supposed to be your friends.

it sounds childish (it is). it sounds selfish (it is). but is it really? im not hurting anyone. im not being a bad friend. all im doing is looking out for myself. and deep down i know that most of you understand why.