In which we have another version of the class reunion meeting with Ted

I have found an old journal with very detailed notes. I'm glad to see that I have remembered the basics of the Ted story, but there are additional details in my notes.


He had walked me to my car and we were standing there with that wonderful tension you have before you kiss someone for the first time. This tension had been present every time we had seen each other the past few weeks but he had never acted on it. I couldn't stand it anymore and blurted, "Are you going to kiss me or not?"

He said, "I want to kiss you. I've thought about it a lot. But we need to have a conversation first."

"OK, so talk," I said.

"Not here. When we get back home."

Thinking he was going to tell me something like he moved back in with his parents after the divorce and until he completed his residency -- which I already had figured out -- I said "OK" and stepped away from him and toward the car.

And he kissed me. We ended up sitting in the back seat of the car, kissing and talking. I hadn't done that since I was in college. Appropriate that I was back in one of the same parking lots I used to visit with my college boyfriend. We talked until 2:00 a.m. He said, "I've been attracted to you for a long time."

"Oh -- since we first met at that alumni thing last month," I said.

"No. Since we started talking on the phone in August."

"But you hadn't seen me yet," I protested.

He leaned over, caressed my cheek and whispered, "But we had spoken. How could I not be drawn to you?" [Tell me you wouldn't have fallen hard for a line like that.]

He said, "That evening, when we met in the airport, when I saw you walking toward me, you were so beautiful. But you had been so casual in your messages -- 'maybe' you would meet me there!"

"I was playing it cool," I explained.

"Why?" he asked. [Because I didn't trust you and in retrospect, I was right.]

He had already turned my stomach into knots that evening. When I got to the Class of '85 reunion dinner, I saw him standing at the bar. None of my college roommates were going to the dinner and I had no one to sit with. I walked over to him. He looked at me and said -- and this is the first time a man had ever said this to me in my life, "You are gorgeous." Up to then, I had not known what his feelings were about me. We had talked a lot, but had not been out on a date and I didn't know if he was attracted to me. I have lots of men friends who are nothing more than friends; he could easily have been one of those.

He looked into my eyes and said, "You are gorgeous" and I couldn't catch my breath.

"So are you," I whispered, and it was the truth. He was smart, he was articulate, he was passionate. [He was also manipulative and a liar and nothing was ever his fault, but whatever.]

We had spent hours on the phone and I had not gotten bored. I couldn't believe that I had met someone so interesting this late in my life. I had just about given up.

At dinner, we sat together. I didn't know anyone else at the table [except Sam and his wife, but yeah yeah yeah. Primo was there as well but I had not met him yet. Sam probably introduced us but the wedding ring on his finger made him dead to me], but didn't mind talking just to Ted. I took off my glasses and laid them on the table.

"Why don't you wear your glasses?" he asked.

I considered telling him a lie: that they hurt my ears or nose. But I told the truth. "Because I'm vain," I admitted.

He looked at me intently. "You are beautiful with or without your glasses," he said firmly.

Two weeks later, he had the, "I'm hot for you but we can't date" conversation that I have already written about. Do you see why I was confused? Oh it gets worse. I'll tell you all the humiliating details. But ten years later, it is still hard to write about this stuff. Jerk.

In which Ted comes over for supper and tells me that he and I think exactly alike

I finished the birthday cake and called Ted to arrange the return of his cutting board and roasting pan. I asked if he was going to the wine tasting the next night -- he could come by before that. He was not. Disappointed, I said, "But I wanted you to help me with my attic. The cord has been snapped off and I'm not tall enough to reach the edge of the door."

"You're probably going to need a new cord put on," he sighed.

I stared to say, "Yeah, but I can do that," but then I caught myself. I have read Men Are from Mars, Women Are From Venus and now know the rule is that men like to rescue women. True, opening recalcitrant attic doors is not exactly slaying dragons, but it's better than nothing. By the time a woman is 37 years old, she had better have learned to take care of herself. But it doesn't hurt to play the game.

"Yes," I said, trying to be coy but probably failing miserably. Down to earth Texas girls don't do coy well. Helpless and clinging are even further away from my lexicon. I stuck with a simple "yes" and hoped that did the trick.

He came over that night and we cooked risotto. When I got out a chunk of parmesan to grate, I realized it wouldn't fit into the rotary grater my mom sent for my birthday. Ted looked at me and said, "You have to cut a chunk of it off."

I turned to him, surprised. "You don't know that's what I was thinking!" I said.

"Yes, I did," he assured me.

Later, I was refilling our water glasses. I didn't remember which is which. He looked at me, then said, "Mine is the one on the right."

"How on earth did you know what I was thinking?" I asked.

"All I have to do is look at your face and I know exactly what's in your mind. You and I think exactly alike," he answered.

It was one of the sexiest things anyone has ever said to me.

Weeks later, he told me, "I've never had that happen with anyone else in my life. It was eerie."

While we were cooking, I asked him about his job. How did he avoid being overwhelmed? He told me that he had had to learn to leave the pain with the patient. He washed his hands every time he finished a session. "I imagine myself washing everything away," he said.

"I had lunch with a customer today," I told him. "He is middle aged, divorced, new to the city. I tried to keep the conversation very businesslike, but he kept talking about his life. His loneliness was so strong. I had to fight it. I didn't want to hear it."

"Why not?" Ted asked.

I stirred the risotto and thought. "I don't have room for it," I said.

"Why not?" he asked.

I just shrugged. "Everyone has pain," I said. I hardly knew this guy. It was not appropriate to say, "Let me tell you about my father's excruciating eight-month battle with and subsequent death of cancer."

After we ate, he went to fix the attic. When he pulled the attic door open, he realized that the cord was not broken but that it was just pulled through to the other side. He drew it back down so I could reach it, then asked, "How do you want me to leave this?"

I answered flirtatiously, "That depends on whether you want to have to come over here every time I need to get into my attic."

He turned around, pulled the cord back through the door, then turned to me and smiled expectantly. I caught my breath and held it. I couldn't figure out what this guy wanted from me. He made me a cake and was flirting openly, yet had told me we couldn't date. I didn't know what was going on. Right then, we were in a perfect kiss moment, but he was not kissing me. I sighed and said, "Better leave it out so I can get to it when I'm alone."

In which Ted takes me to meet his parents and then tells me we can't date

One night, when Ted was working late at the hospital near my apartment, a week or two after we had returned from the class reunion, he called me. Finally! He had to pick up something from home, he said. Would I like to ride with him?

That was a date, right? Sure, he was calling me ten minutes before the event rather than the Wednesday before, but as the prosecutor explained to us when I was on jury duty, premeditation for murder doesn't have to mean that you planned for weeks in advance. It simply means that the thought, "I'm going to kill that SOB" has to cross your mind before you pull the trigger, even if it's only seconds between the thought and the deed. Premeditation means that you thought about the act and then did it, as opposed to an accident or in self defense.

By that standard, I would guess that Mary Winkler did willfully and knowingly kill her sleeping husband by shooting him in the back, because it's not like a sleeping person causes an instinctive self-protective reaction, especially when one would think that an instinctive, not premeditated action would have led to the calling of 911 after one saw the bleeding body on the bed rather than the unplugging of the phone, the loading of the van with the children, and the fleeing to Alabama.

But I digress.

It was a date. He called and invited me to do something and then he picked me up. That is a date.

We drove to his house, aka his mom and dad's house, aka pathetic for a grown man to be living with his parents and why why why didn't I see that?

Oh but he had just divorced! Was finishing school! So much more practical to live with mom and dad!

Maybe. But sheesh. At that age, have some self respect and get your own place.

He showed me around the basement, his living quarters. He wanted me to know him. To see how he lived. Progress.

He introduced me to his mom and dad, who said, "So you're the one Ted has been talking about!"

He told his parents about me? Remember the grad school jerk, whom I had been dating for a few months when his parents came to visit and not only did I not get to meet them but I learned that they did not even know I existed? If someone told his parents about me, he must be serious. Oh deepening crush.

A few days later, he called me again. Could he take me to lunch?

Definitely a date! Definitely!

We went to a small Vietnamese place near my house. I was starving and ordered a big bowl of pho tai. Before I started to eat, Ted told me what he had been trying to tell me for a while.

He said, "I cannot start a relationship right now. I'm afraid that if I do, I will kill it. I am trying to sort a lot of stuff out from my divorce and I know I am not emotionally ready for a new relationship. But I like you a lot and see a lot of potential with you. I would like us to be just friends for now. Later, when I am through this, and if you are not seeing anyone, I would like to have a dating relationship with you."

I lost my appetite. "I've never had anyone break up with me even before he started dating me," I joked weakly.

He took my hands in his. "I'm not breaking up with you," he said earnestly. "But I can't do this right now. It wouldn't be fair to you. I've just got so much stuff. I'm going to a counselor to try to work these things out. But once I'm through it..."

I sniffed and a few tears rolled down my cheeks. He leaned over and wiped them away. "I'm sorry that I've been giving you mixed signals. It's not that I'm not attracted to you -- I am. But Big Southern City was a mistake. I let my emotions take over." I thought to myself that this is not such a terrible thing -- that if your emotions tell you to kiss someone, that that's what you should do (well, if you are both single, etc.).

We continued to talk, leaning in closer and closer until our knees were touching. I held his hands in mine as he told me about the divorce. At one point, I brushed my lips against his fingers. He closed his eyes and took a sharp breath. I kissed his finger. "That feels wonderful," he whispered.

On the way out to the car, he put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me close. In the car, he rested his hand on my thigh. When we got back to my house, he gave me a hug, then kissed me once. I leaned into him and he threw up his hands and stepped back. "No," he said. "No. I am not starting this." When he left, I am confused. His words and his deeds didn't match.

The next day he called me twice. I asked him more about this 'just friends' thing. "Define the difference between being 'just friends' and dating," I said.

"With friends, you don't have the emotional or the physical involvement," he told me.

"Does that mean we can't hug?" I asked.

He thought about it. "No, hugging is OK."

I thought this could work. You can't rule your heart. It's not such a bad idea to limit the physical stuff and if he spends time with me as 'friends' or dating, it's the same thing to the heart. If he was going to fall in love with me, it would happen whether he wants it or not.

I was so naive.

A few days later, he called four times, wondering where I was, leaving messages: "Out with some other guy, I suppose." The next night, he called twice. I was planning to meet Leigh and Megan at the Wednesday night wine tasting. Ted said that he might show up. When I got to the restaurant, they told me that the tasting had been canceled that week. While I was waiting for Leigh and Megan, another wine taster showed up. He had his own wine with him and asked if I would like to share. As he was asking, Megan walked in. We decided to sit with this guy and drink his wine while we waited for Leigh.

Ted didn't show up until late. His friend Richard had intercepted him in the parking lot and told him that the tasting was canceled. When I got home later, I found a series of messages from him telling me that the tasting had been canceled, that I could find him at the restaurant, that he had his cell phone with him (he usually left it in the car) and that I should call him.

So Leigh and Megan and I talked to this guy. Ted and Richard joined us for a while, then left together. I stayed -- we are just friends, after all, so I was not going to follow him to the parking lot. I left shortly after he did and the phone rang as soon as I got home. It was Ted. "I'm housesitting for my sister," he said. "She lives a few blocks from you. It's really cold over here. Why don't I come over and sleep with you instead?"

"I'll lend you some blankets," I told him.

"But it's late! Why don't I just stay there?"

"You may sleep in the spare room," I told him.

"But I'd rather sleep with you!" he answered.

"I don't sleep with 'just friends,'" I said.

"Well, if you don't sleep with friends, who do you sleep with?"

"Significant others," I answered.

"And I'm not significant to you?"

"Hey. This whole 'just friends' thing was your stupid idea, not mine. You live by the sword, you die by the sword."

He laughed and said goodnight.

Months later, after it was all over, when I was seeing the therapist, she told me that he had indeed been courting me hard. My head was spinning from all the mixed messages from Ted: I want to spend hours talking to you! I like kissing you! Meet my parents! But no - STOP! NO DATING! FRIENDS ONLY! I didn't know if I had read everything wrong or if he had been messing with my head.

The therapist assured me I was not mis-reading things but that I should not be involved with Ted now or in the future because he was toxic.

I should have told him to go to heck, or, more nicely, just stuck with my assertion that I did not want to be just friends and if that's all he wanted, he could stop calling me thankyouverymuch.

Instead, I agreed to his terms because half a Ted is better than none.

Yeah. Not so much.

In which Ted calls me every night while I'm out of town at a trade show and then we see each other at our class reunion and neck in my rental car

The week after my birthday, I had to go to California for a stupid trade show. Of course it was on a weekend. My industry always had trade shows over the weekend so nobody would have to miss any work. Heaven forbid we actually spend a weekday discussing the company's products with customers and prospects. That's Saturday work! Or Sunday!

Ted called me every night I was gone. At the hotel. I was at the show for three days. Wait. Maybe he called only once. I remember that for sure, because we talked for about two hours. Still, though, even once on a three-day trip is good, I thought.

On my way back into town, I ran into him in the airport. I was arriving in Springfield from California, he was leaving, on his way to Big Southern City for the reunion. We stood, almost nose to nose, breathing in each other's air. Noted lightly that we would see each other in Big Southern City. (He went early to visit friends.)

When I got to the Saturday night reunion party, I scanned the room. I didn't see him. Rats.

Suddenly, he was standing next to me.

"You look gorgeous," he said.

Well, I did. But to hear him say it - my knees weakened. He didn't look too bad himself.

We sat together at supper.

We sat at the same table with Sam and his wife, Sam being Primo's best friend and a friend of mine from our college days working at the faculty club and eating the "badly cut and not worthy of being served to a professor" piece of pecan pie inch by inch as we went in and out of the faculty club kitchen.

According to Primo, he was at the table as well.

I don't remember him.

Probably because 1. I was in lust with Ted and 2. Primo was still married at the time. Ring on the finger meant invisible to me. I don't mess with married men. I did that once (kissed one who had been flirting with me by phone for months and didn't bother to tell me he was married until we started kissing, which was in person, naturally, but he was so mortified and ashamed that I suspect he never did anything like that again) and vowed to avoid such in the future. I didn't want to be That Woman.

Which is a (small) shame, because Primo was already trying to figure out how to leave Isabel and maybe if he'd had a little nudge (not kissing, but maybe some light flirtation? an awareness of what was out there and what he was missing? except he probably knew that already and actually, yes he did, because the decision to finally leave Isabel came when he realized he was about to have an affair and he didn't want to be That Man), he might have moved more quickly and we wouldn't have gone through all that divorce drama. But then I would have felt guilty for breaking up a marriage and I sure wouldn't want that on my conscience. I have enough there already.

Ted and I talked almost exclusively to each other. When I got up to leave, he said he would walk me to my car. We stood outside the car until he finally kissed me. We kissed and kissed and kissed, then moved to the back seat of the car, where we kissed some more.

No clothes were removed in this endeavor and fortunately, the campus police did not come by with a flashlight, because even if you are fully clothed, having the campus police shine a flashlight in the back seat when you are 37 years old would be a bit embarrassing.

Kiss, talk, kiss, talk. He Opened Up To Me (women love that) and told me about his Bad Childhood and his parents' Bad Marriage and how he didn't want (another - he was divorced) marriage like that and how he Just Wasn't Heard as a child.

"What did you want to say?" I asked, genuinely puzzled, for I had not been through therapy yet (thanks to Ted, though, I would have my chance) and did not know the language.

Just To Be Heard, he insisted.

He finally returned to the party and I left, swooning.

A few days later, Sam emailed me. "What's going on with the chaplain?" he asked. "He sure took a long time to walk you to your car."

"Oh nothing," I answered airily.

And nothing seemed to be the proper answer, for I did not hear from Ted again for a while. But I was not going to call him. I had learned that lesson. I was vigilant! I would wait for him. Oh would that I had stuck with that.

In which Ted surprises me with a chocolate-raspberry terrine on my birthday

Ted and I had been talking and talking and talking. He would call me as he drove from work back home (living with his parents! red flag! red flag!) or out to make house calls. He told me he had gone over his minutes talking to me the first month. Talk talk talk talk talk.

Once or twice, he had met up with me and my friends Leigh and Megan at the weekly wine tasting at a restaurant near my apartment. Not officially a date, but at least we were in the same place at the same time.

It was the night before my birthday. Ted called me at work. "Will Leigh be at the wine tasting tonight?" he asked.

Crap. Why should I be surprised that he was interested in Leigh? What man wasn't interested in Leigh was more the question. She is funny, smart, nice and as cute as can be. Men fall to do her bidding.

I sighed. "Yes," I answered curtly. "She'll be there."

Why had he bothered to call me all this time? Why was he asking me about Leigh? Couldn't he just call her directly? No wonder he hadn't asked me out. I was the person to talk about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Q documents with. She was the one to date. (Not that Leigh couldn't have talked about these things, but she had a lot more work to do at her job. I could goof off a lot and waste time on personal phone calls.)

Fine. I was still going to the wine tasting to see my friends and sulk.

I got to the restaurant. Leigh and Megan were there. Ted was there. We talked and talked and talked and I lusted and lusted and lusted. But still, he would not ask me out. At least here, though, I could lust in person.

It was late. A work night. I finally said, "I need to go home."

He said, "Wait."

Leigh smiled and squirmed with excitement.

Wait? Why?

He went into the restaurant kitchen and returned with a roasting pan. Leigh ran behind him and brought out plates and forks.

He placed the roasting pan in front of me and removed the lid. Lifted the contents out of the pan.

It was a chocolate terrine. He pulled out a container of raspberry sauce. "This goes on top," he said.

My jaw dropped. I had no idea what to say.

He started to sing "Happy birthday" and my friends joined in.

"Cut it!" Leigh urged.

"I don't have a knife," I said.

Ted reached into his pocket. "I brought this," he said as he handed me a box of mint dental floss. Dental floss is the right tool for cutting cinnamon rolls and for delicate cakes.

Remember how I was unhappy about how Calvin would forget my birthday? Up until a later boyfriend's cool gifts, including a belt sander, this was the best thing anyone outside my family had ever done for my birthday.

We ate our cake, which was delicious. Ted repacked everything into the roasting pan, including the layer of ice on which the terrine had rested, and carried it out to my car for me. "I spent some time in Home Depot figuring out how to engineer this," he said. "It had to stay cool and it couldn't get bumped."

He had 1. remembered my birthday even though I had mentioned it only casually in passing, 2. thought about my birthday and what I might like, and 3. gone through a lot of effort to execute the plan, including involving/invoking Leigh to make sure I would be there.

Tell me you wouldn't be seriously crushing on this.

In which I become disastrously involved with the clergyman I meet at an alumni event

I have waited to write about Ted because I am still mortified that I didn't see the red flags that were so big and so wavy that they covered my face and almost smothered me. By the age of 37, I certainly should have known better. It's not as if I hadn't been through Red Flag relationships already.

Some of the flags were of my own creation, which makes it even worse. Am I the person he accused me of being? A strumpet who seduces men against their will? The blood is draining from my face as I even think about it.

And then there is the fact that Ted is someone Primo knows from college. Primo did not know the Ted story. It's been five years that Primo and I have known each other and I've been too embarrassed to tell him about Ted. What would he think of me? But worse than not telling Primo would be for him to read the Ted story here, so I spilled my guts a few weeks ago. Actually, right before we went to our 25 year college reunion. The last thing I wanted was to run into Ted there and end up at the same table at supper with him and his wife and Primo.

To his credit, after hearing the story, Primo said that he had no idea Ted was such a jerk and we should avoid him at the reunion, hey?

I love Primo. He is the best.

Back to Ted. I had moved to Springfield and was plotting ways to meet men. Alumni associations are good for that, right? Common biography, instant bond.

I organized an event. Ted showed up. Whoa! Instant, oozing hotness!

You'd think by that point - post grad-school jerk, post former Marine who had jumped out of helicopters behind enemy lines but couldn't be bothered to tell me he didn't want to see me any more after I made the dumb mistake of sleeping with him AND HE WASN'T EVEN ANY GOOD IN BED and yes, his purple bikini underwear LOOKED DUMB - I would have been very suspicious of instant chemistry and of charm. But I wasn't.

Part of the reason I wasn't suspicious was because he was a hospital chaplain in his last year of divinity school. If you can't trust a clergyman, who can you trust?

I know. That's rhetorical. Please don't answer that.

Ted and I talked and talked and talked. He was so smart. So smooth. We were the last ones to leave the event.

He called me at work the next day. We talked forever. He was on his cell, but stopped at Wal-Mart to use the pay phone there so he wouldn't use all his minutes. He called the next day. He emailed. We spoke ALL THE TIME.

Yet he wouldn't ask me out.

Yes, I know that is a huge red flag, but I believed him when he said he was still getting over his divorce and was trying to take things slow.

I was still convinced he really liked me, though. He revealed deep secrets: that he had a child with a woman he had met when he was working on a kibbutz after college but he had never seen the kid because he (the son) lived in Italy. Ted claimed that the mother had just wanted to trap him into marriage and a move to the U.S.

What a bitch! I thought.

This is where you may figuratively slap me because I took Ted's side instead of the mother's.

Yeah. Horrible woman. Gets pregnant from a guy she meets at a kibbutz and it's all her fault that he wants nothing to do with her and their baby.

Another red flag.

Then Mary Linda, one of my fairy godmothers, called me one day.

"I heard you've been seeing Ted," she said.

There were no secrets in Springfield. Plus she and Ted's parents went to the same church.

"I've known him and his family since he was a little boy. He is bad news," she told me. "Do you know about him?"

"Oh sure," I told her. "He's told me everything."

She paused. "Are you sure? Ever since he was a little kid, nothing has been his fault. He always finds a way to blame someone else."

I waved away her concerns. What did she know?

Turns out she knew plenty, as I found out a few months later, after he had accused me of forcing him into bed against his desires and then did not speak to me again for nine months, when he called me out of the blue to tell me that the house next to his grandmother's house, half a mile from my then-apartment, was for sale and hadn't I been looking for a house to buy?

By then I had been through nine months of therapy, so I knew he was full of crap. But I had to go through some drama to get to that point.

And I will tell you all about it.

In which I become disengaged

The last we spoke, I was in New Jersey for a three-week training program. Did I mention that there were twice as many men as women in this program? And that is was a sales training? And that companies usually hire rather outgoing, nice-looking men to be sales reps?

Calvin was a great guy, but he was rather quiet. Kept to himself. Didn't like to be the center of attention or to do all the talking, which, in retrospect, makes him perfect for me as I want to be the center of attention and doing all the talking, but that was then.

I was having a lot of fun. There were new guys to have crushes on. Not that they reciprocated: the one guy with whom I got along best was engaged. There was another guy, who has become a rather well-known singer/songwriter on the East Coast (oh yes I can googlestalk), who had no interest in me whatsoever, despite my frequent phone calls to him once the training was over.

What's that you say? That phonestalking a guy is not the way to his heart? Even if you've had one, exactly one, necking session with him late at night at a party where people were smoking pot, which is not something I had ever seen before? Not that that didn't go on at Small Private School, but I ran with a pretty squeaky clean crowd. Oh sure, we were sleeping with our boyfriends, but we didn't do drugs. We had our limits.

So no future with cute future Birkenstock-wearing singer/songwriter (now completely bald and slightly chubby, neither of which are disqualifiers, as hair is unnecessary and slightly chubby can hit all of us, but Primo is still a major hottie at 45, plus he wears nice shoes), who asked as we started said necking session, "Aren't you engaged?"

"Not any more," I answered. One does not promise to marry one man and then kiss another.

The kissing went no further. That Monday at training, he more or less pretended he didn't know me. That might be too extreme: he treated me as he had the rest of the time, which was polite indifference. Apparently, he had to be drunk to want to kiss me. I think I was just available.

Whatever.

What I realized was that if I could be that attracted to someone who wasn't Calvin, perhaps I was not ready to get married.

"NO KIDDING!" the audience is shrieking. "YOU WERE 22 YEARS OLD! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?"

Here's where it got complicated (other than the obvious parts of having to cancel the church, do something about the dress, and hurt someone I did care about but did not want to marry): I had moved out of my apartment before I left for training and stored the few belongings I owned in Calvin's apartment. The plan was I would stay with him on my return until I got another apartment. I saved a month's rent! That was a big deal back then. It was worth it to move out of an apartment to save $250 plus phone and utilities. Now it takes a lot more for me to move, but I was a poor recent college grad taking peanut butter sandwiches to work for lunch then.

How was I supposed to stay with Calvin if I had broken our engagement?

I had a brilliant idea. I wouldn't tell him until I moved out!

Oh yeah that was so smart.

Fifteen minutes after he picked me up at the airport, he wanted to know what was wrong.

He didn't believe me that it was nothing.

I told him.

It did not go well.

To his credit - he is a far more gracious person than I because I would have kicked my ex-fiance's butt to the curb - he did not make me move out of his apartment.

But it was an awkward week or two while I slept on the couch at night and hunted for a new apartment after work.

I still can't believe I did that to him. I still owe him an apology for that part.

I did apologize for being so indifferent to his feelings. That was years later, right before he was going to marry one of my college roommates and after the grad school jerk had been so horrible to me. Unfortunately, I think my apology was almost as bad as my original transgression. I told him I was so sorry for hurting him and that I had had no idea how it might have felt until I was mistreated by GSJ.

What I basically told him was that it had caused me no pain to break up with him. Nice, huh? Perhaps he is better off without me.

In which I almost get married

Sorry for the long time since the last post, chickadees. On Thursday, at the crack of dawn, Primo and I returned to the scene of the crime: our college reunion. We met at our 20 year reunion and just had our 25 year reunion. We got back late last night and tomorrow, I am going to see my sister in Next Big City Over, where she will be for a neo-natal nurse practitioner conference, all of which means I don't have time to go into a lot of detail about why I broke my engagement with Calvin. I will say, however, that it was nothing he did and that he is a good person. But I'll get to that.

We were engaged. I had a sparkly ring, which is not something I ever thought I wanted but once it was on my finger, I was very happy to have it, for is not a diamond a status symbol of sort for a woman? It says, "Someone values me enough to 1. spend money on me and 2. commit to me." At least, that is what it said to my 22 year old self. When Primo and I decided to get married, he wanted to buy me a ring but I had realized that I do not like wearing rings and would much rather have a nice kitchen trash can, which he finally got me with much reluctance and only after the SimpleHuman trash can I wanted went on sale at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

We did agree that we would both rather take the $5,000 a nice ring would have cost (I am guessing that is what they cost) and spend it on a grand trip to France.

As it turns out, we spent it getting our driveway re-done this summer, which is almost as glamorous as a voyage to Paris.

Calvin and I were engaged. We had the Meeting of the Parents. Calvin's mom and dad came from Austin to meet my mom and dad at their house in San Antonio. There were hors d' - there were appetizers. There was polite smiling. I am guessing there were thoughts of, "They are too darn young to be getting married." They were correct.

We set a date. July 26. My mom reserved the church. She and I argued over the reception venue. I, who was not investing my own money into this proposition, wanted to have it at a fancy restaurant. She and my dad, who were funding this (and who I now know had almost no money to pay for this), said that the officers' club on base would be fine.

I got a dress. I shopped alone.

Who shops alone for a wedding dress?

Someone who 1. isn't ready to get married and 2. ends up with a dress that looks awful on her.

There may be some women who look good in a pure white puffy muffin dress, but I am not one of them. At the time, I was blonde. White washes blondes out. Now, white is no problem as I am a former blonde who is covering my gray with Clairol #24 Clove, but then, I looked like death warmed over.

And the puffy skirt? I looked like I had walked out of a meringue factory.

Why did I get such an awful dress? Because I was clueless and because it was a floor sample on sale for $250. Penny wise, pound foolish.

When I married Primo, I wore a sleeveless red and white dress with a V neck and a high waist. It looked fabulous and I have worn it several times since. I had a bit more sense when I shopped for that wedding. I still shopped alone, although this time it was because I had just moved to a city where I had no friends, not because I wasn't excited about getting married. Wait. I wasn't that excited about my wedding to Primo because of all The Drama, but I was very excited at the idea of being married to him. I would have happily skipped the wedding and wish I had insisted on eloping, but I guess I'll save that for my next marriage.

My mom asked me what color I wanted for the bridesmaids' dresses. My mom was more excited about the wedding than I was. My parents loved Calvin and rightly so. He's a great guy. He just wasn't the guy for me in the end.

When my mom asked me about the bridesmaids, I shrugged and said, "I don't care."

That should have been a clue.

Maybe it was.

Three weeks after we got engaged, I went to New Jersey for a three-week training program for work. It was there, in the company of the many young, handsome, outgoing men in the class with me that I realized I could not get married yet.

In which Calvin proposes by burying a ring in a tin of Snickers

We had been dating for three years when Calvin proposed. We had been talking about marriage for a while, but it was time to be formal. We were so smug: all those people who were still uncoupled! They would die alone! But not us. We had even named our children.

Oh, karma can be nasty. After I broke off our engagement, I was uncoupled for many many years. Calvin married a few years later, but it took me much longer, which gave me ample opportunity to contemplate and regret my smugness.

I had already quit grad school in English, not that I don't think knowing how to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in middle English wouldn't have made me even more employable.

Calvin was in his fifth year of college, not because he was slow but because he was majoring in electrical engineering and in physics. Apparently, there is not a lot of overlap between those fields.

It was Christmas 1985. I didn't have any vacation, but this was old-time employment where we got the Monday before Christmas Eve, which was Tuesday, off. We also got Veterans' day, Columbus Day, and Washington's birthday. Plus a turkey at Thanksgiving. And the coffee and donuts cart came around at 10. And everyone left work at 4:30. The good old days. Except I don't miss the smoking in the office. At all.

Calvin was in Austin with his family. We drove up to Waco for the state 3A football championship. Our friend Randy was from Daingerfield and his high school team was playing. Daingerfield is a small mill town in northeast Texas. Randy's parents didn't go past 8th grade, I don't think, and his dad worked in the steel mill. Randy, however, got his PhD in chemistry at Harvard, which makes you wonder what his parents could have done with the same opportunity.

If you watch Friday Night Lights, you know a little bit about how important high school football is in Texas, especially in small towns. Dillon might be a 3A school. Who knows? My high school, Converse Judson, was a 5A school, but my senior year was a big fat waste of time. I only went there my that year and it was not, as my friend Leigh coaches me to say, my favorite. I didn't care at all about their stupid football team.

But I did care about Randy's school's team and a statewide championship is a big deal no matter what, which was why we were driving 100 miles to sit in the cold and watch a football game.

But this story is not about football (although Daingerfield won, which is cool). It is about a marriage proposal.

On the drive back from Waco to Austin, Calvin casually asked me to hand him the tin of Snickers in the back seat.

Calvin did not usually carry large supplies of candy bars with him, so I was suspicious.

He had in the past threatened to give me an engagement candy bar rather than a ring because he teased that the chocolate would last longer. Which, in the end, was prophetically correct.

He asked me to give him a candy bar, but I refused. "Get it yourself," I said. I was really suspicious.

He kept insisting - he wanted me to dig around in the tin.

This was not how I wanted to be proposed to. I was not very gracious.

But I did as he asked. And found a box. That contained a ring.

"Stop the car!" I demanded.

"What?"

"Stop the car!"

He stopped. "What's going on?"

"Get out."

He didn't want to, but I insisted. I got out with him.

"Now get down on one knee and propose properly!" I said.

Are you thinking this is when he should have put the ring in his pocket and said, "Forget it?" Because you would be right. Really. Who gets bitchy about how she is proposed to? I could have been a lot nicer. But I was young and full of visions of moonlight and roses and romance novels and it didn't seem right.

Instead of telling me to take a hike, he did as I asked, kneeling on the graveled shoulder and asking me to marry him, which was more than I deserved.

I smiled and told him yes, then admired the ring, a diamond solitaire, which I had never thought I wanted, all the way back and then on my drive from San Antonio back to work in Houston, where the VP saw it and groaned that they had been so excited to hire a bright young woman and that they wanted me to be a VP someday, not married, which confused me because I did not see the two as mutually exclusive.

A month later, after reserving the church and buying a dress, I broke up with him.

In which I get a crush on one of Calvin's friends and break up with Calvin in hopes that the friend will ask me out but he doesn't

Don't hate me. I was young. And easily distracted. But yes, I had the hots for one of Calvin's friends. And I even broke up with Calvin over it for a little while. How I wish I had kept a diary back then because now I cannot remember if I broke up with him before or after we - you know - for the first time, which was (of course I remember the date - don't you remember yours?) Oct 18, 1983. I am coming up on my 27 year virgin anniversary.

Disclaimer: It is easy to remember my virginersary because it is the day before my birthday. But I think I would still remember it had it happened on another date.

Our junior year of college started. Calvin and I had been writing letters all summer and were hot to see each other again. He had been working for his uncle out of state all summer, so we had not been able to see each other. School started late August, which is just when everyone wants to be in [hot southern city]. It's the best time of the year.

I kid, I kid.

July is better.

I need to back up a little. All of our sophomore year, Calvin and his friends had been talking about their friend, Laurence, who had gone to Small Private School our freshman year and then spent his sophomore year elsewhere at Big State U where there would be more and prettier girls. The male-female ratio at Small Private School those days was almost 2:1, which was great for the girls but not so great for the guys.

And I will go out on a limb here and venture that the smart girls who end up at an engineering school are not necessarily the same girls who have a clue about hair, makeup and clothes. As in, if you made a Venn diagram of Small Private School girls and pretty, flirtatious, cutely dressed and accessorized girls, there would be very little overlap. Sure, there were some extraordinary young women on campus who were both smart and really put together, but the rest of us were either clueless or didn't care.

There was a certain reverse snobbery at Small Private School. In the same way that suddenly, the athletes were at the bottom of the social scale (not the least because it was uncommon for Small Private School to ever win a football game - oh, how I miss the SWC), the girls who (obviously) tried were also scorned.

It was an inverse of the high school universe, where many of us (or maybe just me and I am projecting my NOT BITTER AT NEVER HAVING BEEN ASKED TO A SINGLE HIGH SCHOOL DANCE on others) had been on the sidelines looking in at the cool, popular kids. Nerds are not valued in high school, but at Small Private School, almost everyone was a nerd. But everyone was weird in his own way. Nerd was the necessary but not the sufficient.

Laurence was one of those rarities: smart, athletic, good looking and seemingly unaware of his looks. He could have had just about any Small Private School girl but maybe he thought he could do better. Or maybe he just needed to be closer to home for a year.

[Primo is also smart and athletic and good looking, but he was not athletic in college, unless you count drinking beer as a sport. Since he and I started tennis lessons last summer, he has become a pretty good player and will only get better, but his parents didn't put him in any sports. Any. I was a total klutz and my parents forced me to play soccer in 7th grade when Lubbock started the first girls soccer league. Primo's parents, however, are intellectuals and didn't think sports were a good idea for Primo. They were so wrong.

Primo was also not as cute in college as he is now. He was a skinny little 16 year old runt when he started, but he grew and put on some weight and his skin cleared up and he figured out what to do about his hair and now he is a hubba hubba hottie.]

Laurence returned for our junior year.

I had never met Laurence.

The first time I saw him, he was stripped to the waist doing I don't even remember what. Painting the dorm room? That doesn't seem likely. Why would a student waste his own money on paint? My freshman year, my suitemates and I painted the bathroom bright yellow, but that was just because Laurie's dad paid for the paint.

Whatever he was doing, he was half naked.

You've seen the abs on the sculpture "David?"

Laurence's were better.

I kid you not.

And you know all that stuff about how women aren't as visual, blah blah blah?

In Laurence's case, I made an exception.

He was gorgeous.

And NICE! He was also nice!

I fell in lust.

I looked at Calvin, for whom I had also felt lust, but this was stronger. It was lust unadulterated with You were late to pick me up or You forgot my birthday or We had a fight. It was pure fantasy you never fart lust.

After a few days, I broke up with Calvin. So many men! So little time! I was sure that Laurence, who before the breakup and indeed, ever since, including the time we met up in France for a day when I was on vacation and he was working there, has never shown one squidge of interest in me, would ask me out.

But even if he didn't, surely other guys would. Two to one, people! Two to one!

They didn't.

Not one single guy.

What was going on? Was I hideous?

No. At least, I don't think so.

I had been dating Calvin for several months.

I was branded.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I waited a few weeks just to give it time, but no luck. There was not one single other guy on that campus who wanted to ask me out. Or who would ask me out, better said.

So I went back to Calvin.

Nice, huh?

This has to have all happened before The Event or I would not have broken up so easily. I hope.

Calvin was skittish. We went out to eat at this Italian restaurant in Montrose where we got adventurous and ordered snails, which was not my best food moment, as I have decided I do not wish to eat anything that I want to keep out of my garden, but if you put enough butter on anything, it will taste good.

He told me that when I broke up with him (the Laurence breakup - I haven't gotten to the big breakup), he was waiting for his parents to jump on the bandwagon and tell him that they didn't want him to be their son any more.

I should have stuck with the breakup, given that's where the relationship was going to end up anyhow, but. Well. I have no excuses. I was barely 20 - not even. What did I know? Thrashing around and bruising hearts in the process.

In which Calvin's parents don't like me

Calvin's parents didn't like me.

That was a shock.

I was not used to people not liking me when I was in college. Oh sure I knew I wasn't part of the cool crowd and in tenth grade, Sally D suddenly turned on me after I had been her BFF in ninth grade, but in general, I didn't inspire enmity in people. That I knew of.

The parents of my very short-term high school boyfriend, the one who turned out to be gay, loved me. LOVED ME. In retrospect, there were probably other factors at work, as in, they suspected their son was gay and didn't want it to be true for the sake of his desired career, which was military pilot. Even though he only kissed me once, although we spent several evenings alone at his house, watching the videos of Mork and Mindy that his uncle sent from the States, I never suspected he was gay. I thought he just didn't like kissing or he didn't like kissing me.

I digress.

Mr and Mrs Calvinpere did not like me.

I would hope it was because they didn't want their only child to marry too young and make a mistake and never have the glorious career for which he was destined and not because of me personally. I usually don't invite that kind of animosity in people.

Except for Primo's parents, of course, and his best friend from high school, George, who has also decided he doesn't like me. Many and varied are the reasons George does not like me: I blogged once that kids should be out of diapers by the time they are four; I am not Catholic enough (even though if I were more Catholic, I would not have married non-Catholic, lukewarm at best Lutheran Primo); and most recently, I pulled a practical joke on him that he did not think was at all funny and I think he is way over-reacting.

The good thing about George is that I can probably reason with him, which I intend to do. We will be in each other's lives for a long time and there is no reason for us to be enemies. Unless he decides that I am absolutely unlikeable, even after begging forgiveness for the joke, which WAS funny and had Primo's blessing. And George's wife, who also thought it was funny and if she didn't, she should have warned me AS SHE WAS HELPING ME TO EXECUTE IT.

So I will call George after he has cooled down and we will Talk About It Like Adults, which is something that could never happen with Sly and Doris, as they are not interested in liking me at all [See: I am a Bad Bacon Eater].

I would write more about George and The Joke but he is Primo's best friend from high school and he would be bothered if he stumbled on this blog. George! I like you! I want us to be friends, OK?

And if I ever write that bestselling memoir, I will not include any of the George incidents in it because of course I would write the book under my real name. Primo, who has his eye on that Key Biscayne condo, has encouraged me to publish now under a pseudonym, but what is the point of having a bestselling book if the people you went to high school with don't know about it? You know Jen Lancaster has to be feeling smug now that she is at the top of the NY Times (a New York City newspaper) list. Take that, suckers who fired me! she is probably chortling as we speak. And more power to her.

Ooops. I have strayed from my topic again.

When I met Calvin's parents, I sensed a certain coolness. I attributed it to his being somewhat of a mama's boy, although not from his end but from his mother's. He is an only child, but I don't think that is the situation his mother had wanted. He had never had a girlfriend and there had never been competition for his attentions before.

Still, they were nice enough to me. His dad built me bookcases when I moved into the loud sex apartment in Other Southern City, which, to my everlasting shame, I broke down and threw away when I moved from Other Southern City to Houston, where I had gotten a job, because I could not fit them in my car. I could at least have called Goodwill.

But I don't think they approved of me. I can't imagine why.

I ate Mrs Calvinpere's salad
We had dinner at his mom and dad's house. The table was round and small enough that the place settings were rather crowded. I, who had worked at the faculty club for two years and had set the table for formal dinners there, looked at the salad on my left and the water glass on my right. And the salad on my right and the water glass on my left. Which salad was mine? Which water? Logic dictated that the salad that was easier to reach was surely mine. Who would have a diner reaching with her right hand across to a salad on her left? Not I! And that was when I ate Calvin's mother's salad.

At the faculty club, we served the salads by placing them in front of the diner. So much for my fine dining table waiting experience.

I flipped a crab leg over my shoulder and spattered butter on Mrs Calvinpere
They took us out to a nice restaurant. I made the huge mistake of ordering crabs' legs. How does one eat a crab leg if one is not going to pick it up with the fingers and suck the flesh out? Open it along the side using a fork, of course.

If you stick a fork in a crab leg and then begin to saw it open, you are mimicking the forces used on a tiddlywink.

So when you press down on that crab leg in just the right place with enough force, the leg flips up and over your shoulder, spinning and casting off butter as it goes. The butter lands on your boyfriend's mother and on the pink silk blouse you borrowed from your roommate.

I used the Company Towels
I was at Calvin's mom and dad's house for supper. Needed to use the bathroom. The half bath was right behind the kitchen. The half bath had nice white starched lacy towels hanging on the rack. Towels that had never been used. Towels that were obviously decorative.

But my hands were wet. From washing, duh. I do not pee on my hands. Who does? Are the hand pee-ers the ones who get so bent out of shape about other people not washing their hands? Because if you don't pee on your hands and use your foot to flush the toilet (in a public restroom, natch - it's too hard to flush a home toilet with your toes), then there shouldn't be much of an issue, right? I got over my squeamishness about this issue after living in South America for two years, where there are not hand washing facilities conveniently located next to each outhouse.

I needed a place to dry my hands, but a battle in my mother's voice raged slow motion inside my head: Dooooon't uuuuuuse the Coooooompany Toooooowels! vs I need to dry my hands!

In retrospect, I should have just wiped my hands on my pants, which is what I end up doing half the time now anyhow, as those stupid air dryers never work fast enough. Doesn't it defeat the purpose of using less energy if you have to run through four cycles of the dryer?

I used the Company Towels.

The roof did not fall in.

But the next time I was at their house, there was a small stack of paper towels next to the sink.

I got the message.

In which Calvin and I are caught in flagrante delicto

Remember how Calvin and I finally Did the Deed, despite our pure, virginal, wait until we're married intentions?

Once that genie is out of the bottle. Well. You've been there.

Yet. We both had roommates who NEVER LEFT THE ROOM. Or, better said, roommates who commandeered the room for their own amorous purposes (RENE'), to the point that one evening, when Calvin and I returned to my room, we saw the big potted palm that usually lived in the corner of the room I shared with Rene' blocking the door to the room. (Even back in the early '80s, college students were not wearing ties, which meant the traditional tie on the doorknob was not an option.)

We stopped, confused. Then clarity hit us like a mackerel across the face during fish slapping season.

"I think this means we're not supposed to go inside," Calvin mused.

He wasn't summa and PBK for nothing.

"That's riiiiight!" sang two voices in unison from inside the room.

You see? My roommate and her boyfriend almost always had first dibs on the room. It was their love nest, even when I was there studying. I would sit at my desk, trying to concentrate on the narrative structure of Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Rene' and BF would be canoodeling in the big chair that someone had found abandoned by the side of the road in University Park, a fairly tony neighborhood as far as castoffs go, although not as fancy as Really Rich Neighborhood, but RRN people may not have abandoned their unwanted furniture on the curb the way the UP folks did.

It is not easy to concentrate on narrative structure or hidden meanings or where is the sex, which is the main question that drives almost every English major analysis of a work (if it's not sex, it's death), when your roommate is baby talking and cuddling with her boyfriend.

The amazing part of all this is that my roommate was a civil engineering major who got very nice grades and yet did not appear to put a lot of time into her studies. The necking worked for her.

And, in a way, it worked for me. Their shenanigans drove me to the library to study. I made the honor roll for the first time because I spent so much time out of my room. Who knew that a lot of concentration was the key to good grades?

Back to the ranch.

Calvin and I did not have a private place to canoodle and etc, so we were forced to take drastic action, such as necking in the empty physics lecture hall or on top of the geology building. Those are not ideal locations, though. Better to get in the car and drive to the beach and neck while parked on the sand! With the bonus of being environmentally responsible!

It's an ugly beach: brown sand and brown water.  It's the beach for people who have never been to Florida's Gulf coast, where the water is clear and the sand is white.

But it's not hard to get into a romantic mood when you are 20 years old and don't have a mortgage or a flooded basement or are taking drugs that make your hair fall out.

One evening, driven to desperation, we did just that: hightailed it down to the beach. We found a deserted area. Parked. Got into the back seat. Stripped. Started getting busy.

When a bright light flashed through the window.

And did not go away.

We froze.

What to do? What to do?

Blinded, I felt frantically on the floor for my pants, but did not have time to put them back into their proper position, which was on my body.

A knock.

Calvin, who had not completely stripped, as such is not so necessary for a guy, opened the window a crack. This was back in the days when it was possible to open a window without the car being turned on.

A cop shone a flashlight on us.

"Evening, ma'am, sir" he said politely. This was the south. People are polite, even if they are looking at your almost nekkid body. Your almost nekkid body to which they have never been introduced. It would have been rude to comment on our clothing status.

We stared.

"Do you have some identification?" he asked.

"Um. Yes," I answered, reaching my hand back to grab my Small Private School ID out of my jeans pocket.*

Only the pocket was not on my butt where it belonged but somewhere in front of me in the pants that I was holding up to cover my nekkid glory.

Calvin had already extracted his ID from his wallet. I fumbled until I found the ID and then handed it to him.

He took it, looked at it, and handed it back. "Y'all run along now, hear?" he said, probably thinking of his own college age daughter and praying she was not in the same situation.

We nodded. Waited for him to leave. Put on our clothes. Drove back to town. Said goodnight with a chaste kiss.

Nothing will kill the mood like a bright light.



* Wow. Was there really a time I could leave my abode with nothing more than an ID and a key?

In which Calvin forgets my birthday more than once

I am not a high-maintenance girlfriend or wife. Really, I'm not. I don't need jewelry or expensive dinners out or constant attention. I barely wear jewelry and what I wear isn't that fancy. I prefer to cook over eating out because there just aren't that many restaurant meals that are better than what I can make, plus I hate the whole ritual of Dining. It takes too long. And I definitely do not want attention all the time because I am a bit of a loner, or, at least, an introvert. I do just fine on my own.

But.

I want my birthday acknowledged.

I want a present and a fuss on my birthday.

There. I said it.

Is that wrong? Does that make me a bad person?

Primo does a great job on birthdays. He is always so excited about what is doing for me that he gives me my present early. My birthday isn't for a month, but he already gave me a new digital camera for my purse to replace the heavier, bulkier one I've had for five years. You should keep a camera in your purse because when your car gets hit and it's the other guy's fault but you get the ticket because he's a faster talker than you, you can take photos of the cars and the scene and show them to the court, who will waive your ticket, and to your insurance company, who will say, "There is no way you caused that accident" and will go after the guy for the $2,000 in repairs.

The court will also note that nobody has ever brought her own Matchbox cars to re-create the accident (who knew they had their own cars there already?) and they will admire your suit because of course you dressed nicely for court and not in sweatpants with the word "Juicy" across your ass, although perhaps in certain circumstances, that is the attire that would lead to indulgence and the winning of your case.

Calvin was not a birthday guy.

In his defense, he is a bit of the distracted scientist, thinking about relativity and circuits and Big Issues most of the time, but I wanted to be number one in his head.

I never got there. I wonder how things are with his marriage. He married one of my college roommates - a suitemate from our sophomore year. Brenda is the nicest person in the world, but needs a lot of attention. She is not emotionally self sufficient at all, or was not when I knew her well, which was in college and a couple of years after. He did not give me a lot of attention when we were dating. I hope he is giving her the attention she wants.

On a side note, Brenda is also the only person I know of who has lived the nightmare of, "Omigosh I have a 20 page paper on pig iron due tomorrow." Yep. She hadn't read the syllabus and forgot. She spent all night doing that paper and yes, it was on pig iron. This was before the internet, so it was a lot harder to research back then.

In Calvin's defense, he did get me one of the best presents I have ever gotten. For Christmas our second year of dating, he gave me my own jean jacket. Probably to keep me from borrowing his all the time. I still preferred to wear his because it smelled like him and the Polo cologne he wore, a scent that to this day makes me a bit weak kneed. I am not a big perfume/cologne person, but I make an exception for Polo.

I loved that jacket and wore it until it was threadbare. I had the collar turned and wore it some more. I wore it until it was falling apart. Finally, I got rid of it and have regretted it ever since because I have not been able to find a decent replacement jean jacket.

But my birthday.

He didn't do anything for my birthday the first year we were dating. The fact that my birthday was two days after we Did the Deed did not help matters. It also did not help matters that I took my ire out on my friends rather than on him.

The next year, he also did nothing, even though my friends, two weeks ahead of my birthday, were advising him to mark the occasion somehow. I, too, dropped many, many hints, like, "My birthday is coming!"

Birthday arrived.

Nothing.

I got mad at him this time. I had never had a birthday and a boyfriend at the same time and I wanted something special. Not necessarily an expensive present, but recognition. When I was a kid, we didn't have to do chores on our birthday. My mom made a cake and whatever meal we wanted. For one day, the birthday person was the center of attention. My freshman year of college, my mom made a cake and my entire family drove the 200 miles from San Antonio to Houston to deliver the cake and then drove back there the same night. I wanted the boyfriend equivalent of a 400 mile round trip to deliver a cake.

"But birthdays aren't important in my family," he shrugged.

"I don't care," I told him calmly, or maybe snapped. "They're important in mine and just the fact that it's important to me should be reason enough for it to be important to you." I pointed out that he could have folded a piece of paper in half and written "Happy birthday" on it and that would have mollified me somewhat.

I did not point it out in a even, reasoned voice.

Maybe I was a bit immature.

But maybe I was doing it for his future girlfriends/wife. I'm sure Brenda thanks me now.

In which Calvin, the boyfriend formerly known as R.M., and I - you know

Note that I have changed R.M.'s name to Calvin simply because it is easier to type.


You had to know that two college students who had been dating for a while would be tempted to break any vows of chastity, no matter how good an idea such an intention seemed at the time.

Remember I am the one who told my father, the night we were packing the car to drive to Houston the next day to deliver me to college, after he told me, "Now if you're going to get laid, use protection," that "Dad! You know I don't believe in pre-marital sex!" My dad rolled his eyes and said, "It's going to happen. Don't be stupid about it."

And Calvin was a stoic or something silly like that. So we were sure that we were inviolate.

Yet.

We were also normal college students. What can I say? We held off just fine for the first few months of dating, mostly because of intent but also because our roommates never left our rooms. Rene.

We probably would have broken them sooner if Calvin had not spent the summer out of town working.

I wondered about my freshman year roommate, Gloria. She was a Southern Baptist. I am Catholic. I know many fine Southern Baptists, but anyone who knows anything about S. Baptist theology with respect to Catholicism, at least back in the late 70s and early 80s, knows that there is not a lot of intersection in the beliefs. As in, Southern Baptists, I have been told, think Catholics are all going straight to H-E-L-L, that the Church is the Whore of Babylon, the Pope is the antichrist, blah blah blah.

I don't worry a whole lot about what anti-Catholics think because there's nothing to be done about it now. We'll find out when we're dead, right? If the atheists are right, then whatever. I wasted time going to church. If the Baptists are right, then I guess I won't be shoveling snow any more. But there's no point in arguing with someone about religion and faith. Have you ever changed anyone's mind? I haven't. It's better to avoid the topic altogether.

Although I can talk about religion a little bit with my friend Patricia, who is Baptist. We had to attend a funeral - a Baptist funeral for the wife of a friend. Every time we started another song - and there were many and they were the good songs because Baptists don't play - none of that Marty Haugen Gather BS - I would hold the hymnal up to share with her.

She would give a tiny little shake of her head. Knew the song by heart. After the third time, I whispered, "Do you know all the songs in here?"

She rolled her eyes at me. "Of course," she said.

Patricia also knew just about every verse in the Bible, so arguing with her about chapter and verse was pointless. Baptist vs Catholic on Bible quoting? Baptist wins hands down every time.

Gloria told me anyone who wasn't baptized was going to hell, even people who had never heard of God, which I can say with confidence is not the Official Catholic Line.

That conversation was the last one we had about religion. Actually, it was one of the last conversations we had, period. We were roommates because - we were both blonde.

Yes, that's right. The elaborate roommate-matching process based on the three-page questionnaires we had completed before the school year?

Reduced to, "Hey! Let's make a suite of all blondes!" by the upperclassmen who made the freshman rooming arrangements.

Other than our hair, we had almost nothing in common, except, perhaps, the intention to remain virgins until marriage. Not that Gloria and I ever discussed our sex lives or lack thereof with each other. The closest we came to a conversation about it was that I walked around the room naked after a shower because I knew it bothered her. I am not a modest person, so it didn't bother me at all.

She would get into the shower fully dressed. We would see her clothes come flying over the curtain rod. Then she would finish her shower (after washing her hair with the bar soap because she had run out of shampoo and was using mine and our two suitemates' shampoo, so we started to hide it) and her hand would snake out from behind the shower curtain and grab her nightgown. She would emerge clad in her nightie, then sleep on her wet hair so in the morning, it looked as if she had put her finger in an electrical socket.

I knew, though, that she was facing some struggles because I had heard that she and her boyfriend Tad, a senior, a member of the church group with Gloria, and five inches shorter than she was, had been found in the basement fully clothed but in compromising positions. And I accidentally saw them kissing goodnight once, which was almost enough to make me lose my supper, which might not have been such a bad idea because boy, did I eat freshman year.

I wondered if she and Tad ever surrendered.

I am going to say no just because I do not want that image in my mind.

It would have been very very easy to resist Tad. If you know what I mean. Gloria was not particularly physically attractive and she didn't have a nice personality to make up for it, so it's not like she could do much better. (Yes, I know I am being mean here but the truth hurts. Listen, though. If you had a roommate who thought she should be given part of any care package sent by a roommate's mom but wouldn't share her own goodies, wouldn't you think less of her?)

Unlike Tad, Calvin was a hot hot hottie and he smelled fabulous. To this day, a whiff of Polo makes me swoon. Impossible to resist for long, even though we both were adamant that sex was for marriage and we were going to wait. We were!

Then we spent the summer apart, writing letters and making occasional phone calls. Long distance was expensive back then and I was making just a little over minimum wage as a lifeguard and a swimming teacher. I couldn't afford to talk to him that much and he couldn't afford to call me. He did, however, write really nice letters. I wish I still had them.

When we got back to school, we resumed our habit of late-evening walks and necking.

We were going to wait. Calvin claimed he wanted to wait for moral reasons, which I didn't quite get as he and his family were not churchgoers. I think it was more his desire to be stoic and resist his desires. And that he is just a tiny bit of a control freak, maybe? He and his wife, who was one of my suitemates my sophomore year, did wait (I heard from a third party which is odd because really, who talks about this sort of thing?) until their wedding night. Why on earth would anyone but the two of them know this? But yeah - that was the gossip.

I, however, was counting how long before we could be married. Two more years of college. Five to seven years for a PhD.

I had no interest whatsoever in waiting seven to nine years to consummate this relationship.

I began a campaign of "We're going to be married anyhow so it's OK it's just a timing issue."

That was a hard sale.

I finally convinced him.

It took a couple of months.

And then?

I'd been reading romance novels since I was in eighth grade. In ninth grade, I read "Sweet Savage Love" by Rosemary Rogers.

Let's just say these books give female readers the wrong impression. Not what I expected at all.

Still, I was ready to give it another chance. But guess who was the one who was guilt ridden over the experience?

Not me. I was not the one who had to be talked down from the ledge on this.

Eventually, I convinced him. Although even when I had my own apartment off campus, he never spent an entire night with me. Never.

In which Primo tries to keep the peace after the weekly mandatory phone call

Primo: My mom doesn't understand why you are friends with Stephanie yet won't have a relationship with her.

Me: I like Stephanie. She's the only person in your family who has been nice to me from the second I met her.

Primo: My parents say she's not your intellectual equal like my mom is.

Me: Oh good grief. I don't care. Stephanie is nice and we are friends.

Primo: They say she doesn't even have good grammer!

Me: So what? My grandmother said "ain't." Did that make her a bad person? I can look beyond these things, you know.

Primo: My mom wishes you would email her about gardening.

Me: Why can't she email me?

Primo: She says that you're the one who needs to initiate the relationship because you're the one who has rejected them.*

Me: But your mom is the one who wants the relationship.

Primo: I know.

Me: So if she wants it and I don't, isn't the burden on her to email first? You know I would answer her emails.

Primo: She thinks you should start.

Me: I don't want a relationship with your mother.

Primo: But she doesn't have any friends.

Me: That's not my fault and that's not my problem.




* If you do not know why I have rejected Sly and Doris, start reading the archives from the very beginning.