Atomictumor

That date has always been the most important one to me. I mean, sure, November 22nd, 1996, when I became a Dad, and May 7, 2002, when G became a brother (and BJ and I congratulated ourselves on a planned child, somewhat of an oddity in our family) are high on the list, but neither are as important to my heart as February 16. October 14, 1996 we got married, but thats a piece of paper. February 16, thats something real.

It had been a long few months, that went by really, really quickly. I loved college life, way too much, and was completely screwing up school. I drank, and smoked the doob, and stayed up late, and got up late. I went to maybe 20% of my classes. Freedom had gotten over my head, and I was loving it.

I had dramatically failed many of my winter classes (but not French, ironically, the one I seemed to dump to hang out with BJ those times), leaving my Dad to consider inserting a foot into my ass, Red Foreman style, but I kinda got the feeling he was letting me sow my oats, so to speak. I crafted my first website. It was very, very unimpressive, and lost to the 1s and 0s graveyard now.

I occasionally wondered about BJ. I hadn’t heard from her, as I said, since dropping her off in college, although I had heard from third parties that she was back in town, at her parents house. I didn’t have the number, or the sense to look it up, although I did try calling all the numbers I has scribbled around in the dorm room a few times. I figured that she had gone the way of many new friends, that something more interesting came up, and she was pursuing that. More power to her.

I continued to work at the cafeteria, one of the few obligations that I fulfilled, probably because this obligation gave me cigarette and beer money. One of the student supervisors there was throwing a party with his 3 roommates down at some fancy ass’d apartment on Forest (or maybe it was the road past Forest) on 2/16/06, and I was on the list. It was going to be big, and cool as hell.

On that day, I finished up my shift at work (an lunch one, that got me off at about 4), and instead of wandering over to a friends house, I figured I’d dig some quiet time in the dorm. I sat down on the 386 and got busy with some minesweeper for the next 2 hours, which was not what I commonly did, but I guess I was charging my batteries for the party. I was interrupted from maybe my dozenth losing game by a phone call.

It was BJ, in the lobby.

My heart skipped. She had come to visit a friend on the girls side of the dorm, only she wasn’t there. She looked up my number and called me.
“Hey BJ, its good to hear from you! Hell yeah, I’ll be down there in a minute!”

I walked down, and saw a sight that will never leave me, and a sight that made me fall in love with her, completely, irrevocably, immediately.

She was stunning. She had been at home, depressed, for those months, over I guess the way life was going. She had been doing a lot of chatting on the internet (IRC, in its toddler years), made friends that way, and retreated from the real world on a peanut butter diet.

She was wearing a low cut sweater, grey, tight on her amazing chest, with bell bottom jeans that hugged her hips and flared out at her feet like fire.

Her skin was creamy, milky, with dark, flowingly curly hair that reached down to her lower back. Her lips were red, and young, and full.

She was a goddess that I was allowed to see.

I remember walking up to her, realizing that I did NOT see her as a friend, that now she was one of those unattainable, unbelievably beautiful girls. She was always attractive, but GOD. This was indescribable.

As I walked up, she gave me that sweet, warm smile, ran over, and gave me a big hug. Somehow, she hadn’t noticed that she had become Aphrodite while I was gone! She was the same, sweet, fun, BJ!

I couldn’t believe it. It was just too good.

—

We talked in the lobby, and walked outside to the courtyard. My blood was pounding so hard through my body that I don’t know how I managed. She didn’t seem to notice!

I asked if she was hungry, and took her to Krystal. As we ate, we talked about our love lives.

She had that nasty break up with her X, and valentines day a few days ago was ruined by it because he came to pick some stuff up. She was mad, but didn’t seem hurt. I told her that my girlfriend back home had embarked on a relationship with my roommate, unbeknownst to me. It truly didn’t matter to me, because the girlfriend really hadn’t meant anything to me in months.

I remember what we said next.

Me: So, do you have a boyfriend now?

Her: No.

Me: Well, I was thinking… if it was OK… I could be your boyfriend…?

Her: Sure.

She said it so commonly, like I asked her if she’d like a refill, or if she had a ride home. It was sweet, and sincere, but so… common. A lifetime, an entire life, by that one, sweet, pedestrian response. I hear it in my ears today.

I tried to restrain my joy, to match her common demeanor. I held her hand over the table, the first time. It was soft, and small, and warm.

Eventually, I told her about the party, and invited her along (or maybe I had done that before we professed our… uh… relationshipness. She came to the party with me, but I wasn’t watching anything but her.

At one point, I ashed my cigarette into an empty $5 cup, that I thought was mine. It was hers. She forgave me, but never let me live it down. Whenever that party came up in conversation in all the years to come, she reminded me of my faux pas.

She came back to my dorm room, and spent the night with me.

I went back to her house with her the next morning, after a tasty meal at Waffle House, and spent the next few days there.

She was my first, and only.

We listened to the White Album often, lying in bed together, holding hands, watching the sunrise, talking. We talked of dreams, and desires. Of memories, and futures. We talked of everything under the sun in the early light of those first mornings.

Eventually, I went back to the dorm room, but 30 minutes apart was a pretty big distance, and so, early that March, I packed some clothes and moved into her parents house. She never really asked them, and I never really met them. They were pretty damn permissive, but good people.

Those early days, wow. There was nothing but budding love. I had professed my love for her, without hesitation, very early, before I moved in with her, probably in the last two weeks of February. It took her a week or so to admit that she loved me too, but she had been hurt before, and I hadn’t. I was honest, I did love her. I knew it. It wasn’t just because of the ecstasy of the moment, it was that through all my life, the 18 years before, I had never had something so deep with somebody else. When we looked into each others eyes, something locked.

Our souls. I’ve wondered before, with love like ours, what the metaphysical origin was. I never thought it was just a coincidence, even in my most agnostic time. We’re two parts of a greater whole. Or we were.

I sacrificed my friendship with my roommate, and my family (at the time) to be with her. I happily tossed my schooling, and my own future, for the one that I wanted with her. Just a future that meant we would wake up at 5 PM, holding each other, skin to skin, every day, with our budding, but so deep, love. Locked in her bedroom, unless we went out for a few hours. We’d watch TV, we’d play solitaire on the computer together, we’d make love. Honestly, there was a lot of that. I was lousy at it, but she didn’t mind, and you know what they say about practice…

The days flew by in this blur. The outside world was forgotten.

Around April, she expressed concern that she was pretty late on her period. After a little while of denial, her Mom took us to the doc, and we both heard those two words you DON’T want to hear when you’re 18:

“You’re pregnant”

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 19th, 2006 at 7:41 am and is filed under Pain, Love, The AT/GAC Story. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.