sometimes he has problems with the double negatives. i remember when they talked to us about those in grade school. double negatives in the english language are wrong, they said. they make you sound... uneducated.

the first few times he did it i didn't know how to deal with it. i get irritated when educated people use incorrect grammar. your and you're are the worst. i don't understand why people don't think about it before they write it down. your is a possessive pronoun. you're is a contraction for YOU ARE. get it right. fortunately, he knows the difference between those two.

but double negatives. well, i decided that those are forgivable. very forgivable in his case because it only happens when he is upset and in other languages double negatives are entirely common, which is relevant since english was not his first language. also i have grown to find his little grammatical slipups endearing because in nearly all other ways, he is quite well spoken.

i say all of this because we almost broke up on sunday. well, we sort of broke up for several hours. we were talking about family issues, and we got to the point in the conversation where he said through tears that he didn't think it would be morally right for him for us to stay together and disobey his entire family. he's been told on numerous occasions over the past few months that if he ends up marrying a whitey someday, he's going to break his mother's heart and become the scorn of his entire family. and so i wanted to make it as easy on him as possible. so i sort of broke up with him. it was so pansyish that it was entirely unbelievable, but i said the words, and we both started crying again. we went through the you-don't-deserve-what-you're-going-through, i-want-you-to-find-someone-that-makes-you-happy sentiments-- the things that make you cry even more when the truth is that neither party wants to find someone else. he was very upset at how his family was treating me and said that any guy's mother should welcome me into her home with open arms. dang that made me cry.

so i was about ready to leave and i told him that he had my number if he ever needed anything, and he said he would always want to keep in touch to make sure i'm okay and that if i ever needed to be taken care of, just to call him.

and then he said it.

if you don't want nothing to do with me after this, i understand. he said it through tears as he was hugging me.

i'll never forget that. it broke my heart that he said that. broke my heart.

and so i left his house in tears, went back to helen's place in tears. he asked if we could talk more about stuff later that night, so i was waiting for him to finish with his family festivities. helen came home with double-decker pizza and we talked. he called later, asked if he could come over.

we sat in his car in silence for about 10 minutes.

"do we have to end?"

"i don't want to."
"i don't want to either."

"you make me happy."
"you make me happy, too."

"let's not end then, let's just keep things on the low for awhile."
"okay."

and so ara and stephanie were no longer no more. at least for the time being. hopefully for longer than that.