How We Met, Part I

This Sunday Partner and I will celebrate our first year since the ceremony. Oh, why not just say it: Married one year. Sure, it's illegal, but married is what we are. In honor of that fact I thought I'd tell the story of how we met and started dating.

Five years ago I was a swinging single—and to tell the truth, I was having fun. Just one year previous I had started the Detroit women’s rugby team and the group of women playing together was fantastic. Like the vast majority of rugby teams, we knew how to party. I regret nothing about this time in my life—even some of the people I dated or didn’t date as the case may be. To say I wasn’t necessarily looking for a “mate” would be true enough. I probably thought I was at the time, but realistically, looking back, I know I wasn’t.

Besides hanging out at bars and on rugby pitches, we sometimes decided to do something different, and thus a group of us from the rugby team ended up at an Indigo Girls concert. Nothing attracts lesbians like the rugby or the Indigo Girls. While at this concert, a friend and I were checking out the ladies, commenting on which ones we thought were cute when I spotted a really pretty blonde at the bottom of the hill. Her green eyes were snapping and she seemed to do nothing else other than smile and laugh. Do you know some people who exude positive energy? Even from afar you can feel it? Well, imagine it if you don’t know anyone like this and you’d have this woman. She was wearing cargo shorts, a bright orange ribbed tee-shirt, and over that a blue Hawaiian shirt. I remarked to all around us that THAT GIRL was the cutest. “Joie de vivre” was how I explained it.

Oh well—concert over. I never met that cute concert girl, but didn’t really dwell on it. She was good-looking and had a good presence, but seriously, how many times do you see someone like that? Do you continue to think about the person when you’ve never met him or her? No. You don’t. You usually just get back to your real life. Which is what I did.

One month later we had a night game scheduled with the Windsor women’s team. I borrowed my dad’s truck so I could pick up the post pads and I was barreling across the fields of the Detroit Light Guard Armory in the F150 when I saw her: the cute concert girl, sitting under a tree next to the rugby pitch! Holy shit! What was she doing there? Turns out she had some friends playing in the match and she came to be a cheerleader. I got the skinny on who she was from my friend Lori, who told me this girl had just gotten out of a long-term relationship and was apparently not interested in a relationship. That was just peachy for me. I wasn’t really sure I wanted to be in a ltr with a woman. Ha.

Later at the biker bar we frequented, on the infamous E!ght M!ile complete with bullet holes in the doorway, my team-mates encouraged me to talk to her. It wasn’t exactly a secret I thought this chick was hottie. In an odd fit of shyness, I refused. After a few pitchers of beer, the bathroom beckoned and as I was peeing in one of the two stalls, I heard the door open. Two women entered. Woman one was in the process of relating how I thought woman two was really cute and wanted to meet her. It was at this point the slow horrible realization crept upon me that this was the cute concert girl with one of my team-mates. Now remember there are two stalls, and woman one entered the only free stall, which left cute concert girl waiting in line.

Oh, what to do, what to do? I could hover in the stall and wait for her to leave, hoping to God she didn’t see me leave the bathroom right after she did or I could flush and come out, head held high. After all, woman one wasn’t lying: I did think she was a cutie. So, I took the later option, and guess what? We stared talking and we talked for the rest of the night until her friend got really drunk and started crying about missing her girlfriend who was away for the summer in Israel and this cute-concert girl thought she should take her home. She was wearing this little lightweight navy blue vest I had, and she handed it back to me. She left the bar. I sat down with my friends again who immediately asked me if I had gotten her phone number. No. I didn’t. “GO get IT before she leaves!” they advised, so I went outside where cute-concert girl was just getting in her car. “Um, do you think I could get your phone number,” I mumbled, “maybe we could go out sometime?” She smiled at me. “I put it in your jacket pocket,” she laughed as she started up her engine.

When I went back into the bar, I was elated. This was great. She left me her phone number! I emptied out my pockets, but there was nothing other than the dollars I had left to see me through the end of my beer night. I went from total elation to total depression in moments. I mean, why would this girl lie to me? If she didn’t want me to call her, she could say it rather than lead me on, eh? I drank the night away and left the bar with only one dollar.

The next morning my friend, Ms. Magnetic, rang me up to find out how it went with the cute-concert girl. As I was relating the whole long story, I took that last dollar out of my vest and was smoothing it out, moaning the phone-number incident. I turned the dollar bill over and BY GOD THERE WAS THE PHONE NUMBER!!

Recognize please the significance of this: I could have spent that dollar! It was the only one left at the end of the night! She didn’t lie to me! I could call her at that very moment. Which is what I did at the urging of Ms. Magnetic. And now you’ll just have to wait for part two to find out what happened next. I need to go home now and have a drink. It’s that time of day.