Abusing Nostalgia: The First Date
/Today is Nicole's birthday.
I've written a lot of things about Nicole. Heck, I wrote an entire book about her, really. I've written so much about her (and us), that I thought I'd share some of it. Pretty much all of it was written just for us. I've never considered the possibility of trying to get it published anywhere.
This is how we "met."
I've written a lot of things about Nicole. Heck, I wrote an entire book about her, really. I've written so much about her (and us), that I thought I'd share some of it. Pretty much all of it was written just for us. I've never considered the possibility of trying to get it published anywhere.
This is how we "met."
“Hello”
“Hey,” said
Brandon in his
usually upbeat, somewhat innocent manner.
“Brandon,” I said. This is the relationship we had: I was mean
to him. I mean, I wasn’t literally mean
to him, but I joked around in a very mean fashion. I knew he could take it though, or else I
wouldn’t have done it.
“I just got
a message from some guy telling me I’m cute and funny.” See, he said things like this and it was
impossible for me to not be mean to him.
It was impossible.
“I take it
he’s never met you,” I said.
“On
Friendster,” he said, which is funny because the assumption here is that I not
only knew what Friendster was, but I knew how it worked. But it was a safe assumption to make.
“You’re on
Friendster?” I said as I typed the address into my web browser. I wasn’t doing anything work related, anyway,
and this gave me yet another source of distraction. It was hard work finding ways to spend so
much free time when I couldn’t leave the office.
I pulled up
the Friendster page and logged-in – as I said, I not only knew what Friendster
was, I was well aware of how it worked.
Hell, the last girl I really dated I met on this thing, but that didn’t
last too long. Still, it was an
interesting system, particularly for those of us who had a hard time braving
the Los Angeles
social scene.
“Add me to
your friends’ list,” said Brandon,
so I looked him up and added him to my friends list. “Isn’t that a great picture of me?”
By this
point, though, I’d quit listening to him.
I was now scanning the people in his
friends list in hopes that they weren’t all gay men. They weren’t.
In
particular, one photo caught my eye. The
name above it was Nicole. So I clicked
on her.
“Hello,” I
said as the page loaded, “who’s Nicole?”
“You should
send her a message,” said Brandon,
“she’s totally chill. You’d get along
with her.”
So I
did. And this is what I sent:
Date:
|
Sunday, October
24, 2004 11:42:00 AM
|
Subject:
|
Hello
|
Message:
|
Brandon said I should send you a message.
It
happened much like this: Brandon: Some guy I don't even know sent me a message on Friendster telling me I'm cute and funny. Me: You're on Friendster? Brandon: Yeah. Me: Let me add you to my friends' list. **I look up Brandon.** Brandon: Isn't that a good picture of me? Me: Yeah, it's fan-freaking-tastic, Brandon. Brandon: Isn't that a good description? **I ignore Brandon and scroll down the page to his list of friends.** Me: Hello. Who's Nicole? Brandon: Nicole! She's a girl I used to work with. You should send her a message. Me: Okay. It dawns on me, however, that this could be the worst conversation starter ever. But I hold out hope. |
And they
say romance is dead.
Below is what I wrote in my journal three days after our eventual first date (on December 1st, 2004). I think it says it all.
Saturday,
December 04, 2004
I really am
bad at this.
So,
Wednesday night. I met Nicole at Molly
Malone’s for drinks. She was waiting for
me when I got there. It took me about
three seconds to see her as she looks a lot like she does in her pictures. But not exactly. In fact, she actually looks better than she
does in her pictures.
I got there
and she’d already ordered drinks. I was
extremely calm, which was just weird. I
mean, I wasn’t nervous in the slightest.
She was. But the more we talked
the more she relaxed and, of course, the more we drank the more comfortable we
felt.
I don’t
know. I could go into a lot of details
about it but it’s getting late.
Basically, we spent a few hours at the bar and then a few hours here at my
apartment and I really like Nicole. I’m
trying to be good about this. I am.
She’s
coming over tomorrow night.
Eight plus years later and she's still the most amazing person I have ever known.
For what it's worth, I proposed in the parking lot of that bar, but that's a story for another time.