07/02/2024
From my book, "Broken for a Purpose":
Going Adrift
Sharing an apartment with two bona fide players was the worst thing that could've happened to me. With the dormant inclination to sexual immorality inside of me, it was like gasoline on fire. Nelly and Jimmy were not only womanizers but also lived their lives like epicureans, always looking for the next party in town. Before long, I trailed behind them at all the nightclubs and strip clubs around New Jersey. They would work hard from Monday to Friday, but the weekend was their time to have fun—lots of it, trying to ease the week's pressure.
Who would have thought that in such a short time, I would live like someone who never knew God, his precepts, and his warnings about loving the world and the things of the world? By ignoring Him, I was on the verge of becoming his enemy, which is the penalty for preferring the world to his grace (1 John 2:12; James 4:4). But I didn’t seem to care. You would never know how good of a Christian you are unless you’re exposed to temptations in a position where you have the opportunity to fulfill your wildest, ungodly fantasy. I guess it was not God’s fear that kept me from going wild; it must’ve been the fear of being outcast by the Church. Back home, I acted like a Christian, but deep inside, I was more inclined to follow men’s religious traditions and dogmas than to have the biblical kind of reverence toward God. It was just peer pressure. Once I was far away from the Church and the people who could rebuke me, the wild beast within me just woke up and went out of the box.
I began to live like a devil, following two guys, Nelly and Jimmy, who did not have the slightest idea of salvation, let alone holiness. Instead of being a light to them, their darkness invaded my soul little by little. Following in their footsteps, I tried to become something I was not: a player.
However, in player land, Nelly and Jimmy had three advantages over me.:
1) They were both tall, about 6'2"
2) They were both light-skinned (the preference of many women in town).
3) They had no conscience of breaking any laws (They had never been Christians).
But I would soon learn the hard way that girls in this part of the world had the habit of keeping short men at bay as if they were lepers. I’d be lying if I said it did not break my heart, coming home empty-handed after long nights fishing at the club while the two machos always caught a fish. When they did not come home with at least one girl, their pocket would be filled with phone numbers.
After a while, pitying me, they promised to help me find a date so I could relieve my balls from the semen that had begun to thicken for the last few months. And to be honest, they had tried but to no avail.
One day, I asked my new friend, Solon, to take me to the Caribbean International Club in Orange, New Jersey. It was a young Friday night, and eaten up by nostalgia, he suggested we go earlier than usual. If I could drink a few beers, look at some nice booties, and get at least one phone number, my mind would have been cleared.
As we walked through the door of that old paint-pilled building, I felt relieved. I hoped l would walk out the door as relieved. I was counting more on luck than on skills, considering the rejections I’d been experiencing lately. I began to lose confidence in attracting girls, and slowly, my self-esteem began to shrink. That’s what happens when rejection is mixed with the sarcasm of so-called friends who find it funny you’ve been dissed by almost every eligible bachelorette in town. But I hoped that on Friday, I would have better luck. Maybe I would stumble upon some less conceded, desperate girls—not ugly, but desperate because of a recent broken heart. I was not looking for a relationship—I did not intend to break up my family. I was looking for someone to fill the void until my wife came. Was it too much to ask?
The image of Nelly and Jimmy’s laughter after the last rejection was still played in my mind. Just when I thought they were on my side, they ridiculed me.
“If you were just a few inches taller,” Nelly said with his big mouth. Jimmy joined him, laughing at my expenses. “What kind of friends were they?” I asked myself. Just because Mother Nature favored them, those two empty-headed clowns thought they were kings of the world. That was how I tried to get back at them—in my mind, though. I wouldn’t pick a fight with them; they would make more fun of me. But I began to stop trailing behind them. I’d rather go to the club alone or with someone else. I didn`t want them to witness my misfortune with those shallow women of NJ. As a matter of fact, I avoided being at the same clubs with them. I would purposely ask them which club they would go to so I could choose a different one.
