His name was Dale Brendle.  It had been such a long time since I had met someone and our conversations were not sexually based.  Once you got to know him you had to  love him.  He was confident, charasmatic, fun and we were having the best time together.  The more I got to know him the more I liked.  As with all things I had several reservations about our new found friendship.  First of all, he was nine years my junior. I had friends of all ages but I usually gravitated towards the older crowd.  This would be because I was reared outside my generation.  I had lived with my great-grand mother all my life.  She was strick.  Her rules were based on the old south.  If she had been alive she would have been mad at me because I was breaking her number two rule.  I was dating outside of my race.  ( Yes at this juncture I considered us as dating).  I am an African-American female and he was Caucasian.  He had  a certian ethnic look to him as though he may have been Italian or something.  His hair was naturally curly, but he never let it get that long. He didn't like it.  I think he thought it made him look like a little kid. I actually liked it.  I would get to see it curly on many occassions later on down the road.  He didn't keep much, if any hair on his face.  As I noted before he had the most beautiful eyes and a melting smile.  If these had been the only differences with us I probably would not have thought a second thought about it.  They weren't.  He still lived at home with his parents.  At the time that we met he was nineteen and I was twenty-eight.  I had been on my own since I was his age which seemed many years ago.  The last obstacle seemed unimportant since I didn't think our relationship would get terribly serious, but he was a virgin.  Yep, he was as pure a fresh laid snow.  This I though was commendable, especially in this day and age.  After finding out about his background I was not surprised at all.  His parents had been married over twenty years and his grandparents were headed towards fifty.  He was waiting until he found just the right person to share these intimare physical emotions with. Again, one more thing that made me more facinated with him. 

As weeks grew we began to spend more and more time together.  We hung out on our lunch break, we spent our days together and we even slept together, in the exact sense of the word that we were actually fully clothed and asleep.  I had finally found a friend that could look past my physical atributes and see me for the intelegent girl that I was.  At twenty eight I had had enough of the boob jokes an enough of the "what can you do for me" and offering of things I wanted if I would just sleep with them.  This truly gets old.  I wanted to be admired and respected not just because I was appealing to the eyes but also by the mind.

I had lived in Jefferson City ever since the birth of my daughter.  I was origionally from Kenton.  One of the greates things that I acquired in Jefferson City is my best friend Vanessa.  We have been friends ever since we met.  I didn't really start going out untill after Jordanne was born.  One thing that was probably about me going out was that I didn't need a drink to have a good time.  All I needed was music and usually the company of my close friends. Vanessa didn't really have much to say about the new found relationship I had developed.  She had been close to me through two of my long term relationships that had went sour.  We were alot alike.  At this point she had one girl and two boys.  We had been through quite a bit.  Right around the time I met Dale I had decided maybe I needed to go home.  Home was what I called Kenton since I had lived there the majority of my life.  I genuinely missed it.  I had always envisioned that once I started a family I would have her go to the same school system I went to and let her see where I had come from.  Since everything was going so haywire I felt that I needed some solid and familiar ground.  So I decided to move.  Kenton was five hours aways from Jeff City.  This meant that there wouldn't be  a lot of trips back.  It would maybe a couple of times a year at best.

Vanessa decided that we needed one last girls night out  We were going to go to the bar that we always went to.  It was called Tango's.  Contrary to the name there was no latin dancing going on there.  It was just a regular bar that played a mixture of rock and hip hop music.  We were down there every weekend.  It was fun.  She and I were opposite in alot of ways and alike in a lot of ways. She and I were both adopted.  She was Thai and white.  She had beautiful long hair and a great personality.  She was pretty strong with her words.  That was something I had always admired about her.  Often she would say things that maybe did not need to be said, but I always had her back.  This story however, isn't about that section of my life.  It is about me and my realtionship with Dale.

It was three weeks before I had planned to move.  Dale was not happy about it, but he knew that it was what I felt was best for me.  He was supportive in my decsion.  The company that I worked for had a location in Kenton so the transfer would be simple for me.  I was a little scared, but I knew that I had to do this.  I was excited about the night on the town that Vanessa and I had planned.  Dale was not really a club person.  Some of it had to do with the fact that he couldn't drink leagally, but the majority of it had to do with he didn't like the crowds and the club scene. He called me to tell me to have a good time.

That night I had on what would soon be known as my signature color, baby blue.  Don't know why I love it so much, I just did.  We were on time for us.  We got there about ten and had VIP parking like we always had.  We got in and the night started.  Since this was such a special occasions we decided to drink the posion that neither one of us ever wanted to fool with. We made this night the exception to the rule.  At this club they let you dance on the bar for shots. We were good at that.  So I think, to the best of my memory I had a couple beers, four various shots from dancing on the bar and for some crazy reason, six shots of tequla.  I was so over my limit.  So far gone.  As girls we had rules.  If we came to the club together we left together. The bath room, out for a smoke (even though I didn't), or what ever we did it together.  Even if we met up with an old flame or somebody we walked out that door together then decided what we were going to do.  We enjoyed going to the same club because secrurity knew us and knew we never started trouble so if we wanted some obnoxious guy tossed, he would be tossed.

It was summer and it was fairly warm.  That wasn't helping my drunken state at all.  I was a light wieght when it came to drinking.  Dancing was my key, that helped get the alcohol out my system. I had done quite a bit of dancing, but apparently not enough.  There was a guy I vaguely remember dancing with.  Not even really dancing.  He made some eyes at me and we shimmied a little.  No contatct.  I do remember that every time I looked in his direction he was oggling me. This was one of the only times Vanessa was nowhere to be found.  I was standing at the bar with my head in my hand.  Things were just starting to spin.  The guy from earlier was standing next to me.  He could see that I was in pretty bad shape.  He was telling me that he knew where Vanessa was.  This was primarily since I was asking about her groggily.  He told me to  come with him and he would take me to her.  He led me through the club, to the back bar where there were a set of stairs.  As often as i had been there I never even knew that there were a set of stairs by the back bar.  I spent so much of my time on the dance flooor there was no way for me to ever know.  Before I knew it we were down the back stairs and out the back door..