Next month marks 30 years that D and I have been together as a couple.
Our story started with dental insurance, which is where every romance begins.
He was finishing his master's degree, and I was wrapping up my bachelor's degree. We had worked for the same company for a bit, seeing each other in the halls or kitchen. I worked part-time as a file clerk, and he worked in the IT department. I thought he was cute---tall, dark, and nerdy. Imagine a young Harold Ramis in Ghostbusters and you've seen D in his late 20s. My co-workers were dying to set us up.
I think D and I spoke to each other once in the elevator before we "happened" to both go a going-away drinking session for a coworker in accounting who was leaving the company. We all met at a bar, and I spent most of the night chatting with the husband of one of D's coworkers. I'm not sure D said anything to me until we left and walked to our cars. Whatever he said wasn't memorable.
What was memorable is that two days later, he called me and asked me to go for a walk at a park. I was sitting on my porch reading The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck when my parents told me I had a phone call. (Gawd, just typing that feels ancient---when I didn't have a phone strapped to my hip.)
We met at the dental office parking lot and drove together to the park. We stopped at Ear-X-Tacy, where I refused to let him buy me a Jeff Buckley LP (because then I would owe him something and we weren't having any of that). I remember nothing that we talked about.
What I do remember is that he asked me out for the following weekend, which is the surefire way to my heart---asking me well in advance to do an activity. I have never liked being treated like a last minute "might as well" by anyone.
The night of our first "date" date, we went to dinner at the Bristol where D proceeded to not talk much at all. It was awkward, and I remember thinking to myself, "This is probably going nowhere." We then went to see a play called "Angry Housewives," a title I didn't realize was so prescient to what our future would be. I remember when we were leaving, D placed his hand on the middle of my back, whether to keep hold of me in the crowd or steady my way I don't know, but I recall liking the feeling. Still, I didn't know if it made up for the not talking/awkward dinner.
He drove me home and we took a walk all over the neighborhood in the dark, and like Robert Frost noted, that made all the difference. Something about the darkness allowed D to come out his shell. He told me he watched the film Orlando and enjoyed it, which is the sum total of what I remember us discussing. Oh, and he kissed me before he left.
Hot and heaviness followed for a year until we got engaged, 29 years ago this month. We married 18 months after that.
We will soon be having a big to-do of sorts, which I didn't specifically plan for our 30 years of togetherness, but it happens to coincide with it so I'm calling it our "celebration." Of course, it isn't a party---did you not read anything about the quiet dude I hooked myself up with 30 years ago?
I looked back while composing this to see what else I've written here about marriage, and I've periodically, dating back to our 15th wedding anniversary, written about our relationship, mostly in good terms. It hasn't been all roses, for sure.
But he's quiet, and I have a hard time being around people who blather on. And he doesn't like sports, which is the other reason he stole my heart besides asking me out for a date a week ahead of time. He's not a messy guy, and he looks good in a beard, and he, more or less, doesn't care what I do. He thinks I'm funny and smart. And I'm assertive enough to politely tell a solicitor we don't want any and goodbye so that D doesn't have to do it when he accidentally is too close to the glass-paneled front door when someone knocks, and he (thinks he) can't really hide. He's still tall and nerdy but now gray all over---still giving off Egon vibes 30 years on.
