Delonte: "I did a few romantic things in my day, but I'm not the world's most romantic guy. But I can tell you what I would consider a special night. First, at my lady's work, I would send her a card giving her instructions for the night. Send it to her about midday, so the rest of the day, she has time to think about exactly what I had planned. I would pick my date up. She wouldn't know where we were going. It's got to be a hot day, so I can drop the top in my SL [Mercedes]. I've got the white SL 500. I would tell her, she would have to wear white. She must have on a white dress, because I'm going to have on white. I'd have told her in the note, she has to wear her hair a certain way, just the way I like it. So, I pick her up in my white convertible. From there, I'd have the music pumping on the radio. The Jim Jones pumping, you know, 'Summer in Miami' song pumping. Got to keep a little gangsta, you can't be too soft. You can't be in there playing some guy that's crying, talking about don't leave me and love me baby, wah wah and all that. So Jim Jones pumping and then from there, wind blowing through the hair, boom, we get straight to the point -- we eat afterwards because I don't want to kiss no onions. I don't want to kiss you tasting like onions and steak and mushrooms and everything."
Teammate Orien Greene interrupts: "What, you taking her back to the Mot 6 [Motel 6]?"
Delonte: "So, where we going then? You know, with the female readers, I might get me a superstar off this one. I might get me Beyonce or something. OK, now listen to this, so put this in there, OK, so from driving the car, let's be real. I started off wining and dining and Rico Suave-ing it, then I'm going to have to hold to it and realistically, she's not going to get that every day. OK, so we'll be chilling in my SL on a nice hot day, we're going to let the day play out. But we have on all white, so we have to do something special."
Greene: "Take her to your yacht, dog."
Delonte: "Yeah, we're going to my yacht. We'll pull up at the docks and got a guy waiting for us, open our door up and we walk down a lit-up dock and onto the yacht, where we have dinner set up on the boat and we just cruise out on the water. Sit down and have some dinner, some shrimps and steaks, keep it nice and breezy. Pop some bottles, some Moet Rose. The red Moet, we ain't popping no Kristal, it tastes like urination. We ain't popping no Kris, that's $500 a bottle. It ain't that serious. It ain't going to get you drunk. Make sure you put that in there. We ain't doing a $500 bottle, we're doing a $99 wine and dine. While we're eating, have a singer. Who should I have?"
Greene: "R. Kelly."
Delonte: "I can't afford R. Kelly."
Green: "You can't afford R. Kelly? Oh, you talking about you going to actually have him on the boat singing? Oh, man, you doing it like that?! I'm telling you, you all might not come back for two, three days."
Delonte: "So, we are done eating, man, we've got to have someone singing while we're eating. OK, so from there, we're doing a midnight skinny-dipping jump. Alright? From there, hopefully she's got money because I hope Jaws gets her, boom, make sure she got me in the will, bank, I'm good. Oh well, shark got her! Jaws got her. Nah, we ain't going there.
Do some skinny dipping, but keeping it clean fun, don't need to get all right to the point, you know, keeping it clean. Boom, get back, take her back home. Give her a kiss, tell her I enjoyed my night, let's do it again. I don't want her in a situation, because skinny-dipping, she'll already be shaky about doing that if it's an early date, but most likely she will [skinny-dip], but I don't want to end up in one of those situations where you're feeling the mood too much and you try to press the situation and you came all out your hook up. And now you leave feeling lame because you'd try to force the issue and she really wasn't with it, and I know that's happened to a lot of guys out there, you done and feel the night a little too much. So, just keep it nice and easy, and I think from there she'd have a good enough impression where she might want to do it again."
With all this romance talk, you must be a big Valentine's Day fan?
Delonte: "I hate it because -- you got to make sure you print this -- it's the biggest misconception. There's been couples that have fell out on Valentine's Day because the guy has forgot or didn't do anything special. But before Valentine's Day, for two weeks in advance, at every store, you see cards and balloons with Happy Valentine's Day, candy on sale: Two for $49.99 and the mini one for $19.99, and each female that is in that store shopping, three, four times a week, sees everything she probably going to get, so is it really that special? I think it's more special if it's just the guy happens to give her flowers on a Monday and say Happy Monday and not wait for the world to say, 'On this day, give your wife flowers.' See, if she doesn't know she's getting flowers and she gets them, she'll say, 'Oh, this is the most beautiful thing you've ever done for me.' I think Valentine's Day is just a day for candy makers and card makers to make some more money. I think you should be romantic on your own time."
Anything more to say, Delonte?
Delonte: "One more thing: When we're on the yacht eating, we're going to have some Popeyes chicken. That's for dinner. It's to let her know, put a mental image on her mind, first and foremost, if you ain't from the hood, you don't like Popeyes chicken. Everyone there loves Popeyes chicken and the biscuits -- phew. But that's just getting it on her mind, saying, you know, 'Yeah, I can wine and dine you, but I'm a little rough around the edges and I'm keeping it real with you. I can be romantic, but this is real, we're going to eat some chicken tonight. Chicken and biscuits.'"
