I been asked many times now, “How did you and your boyfriend meet?”
And everytime, all I can do is smile and state how long of a story it is. Because truly, with my detailed brain and ramblings, it IS a long story. But the details are important, because without each chain of events that happened, we never would have met.
So, I thought I would write about it here, and just send people this link when they want to know. Haha, lazy.
So let me start way back, On June 22nd 2008….
We had our last performance for “Pirates of the great lakes”. I was sad it was over, but out the audience doors walked my friends, and to my surprise, my friend Ryan was with them. Ryan and I had been in the crucible together, and he lived right around the corner from me. I was excited too see them all since only one of my friends had even bothered to come see the show. I thanked them and told them I would text them when I was done cleaning and got to wash up. I felt bad not being able to talk to them about their thoughts on the show.
I went home with my brother, a little dazzed, sad and also relieved at the same time that we were done. It had been exhausting work and I felt especially bad for my brother since he was on stage thru the entire show. I got to work right away with scrubbing my stage makeup off. Pink lipstick stained my cheeks, lips and my eyelids all the way up to the black drawn on eyebrows. Stage foundation is tough enough to scrub off as it is, but I spent awhile with rubbing alcohol and a washcloth and prob lost 2 layers of skin alone.
I had gotten multiple texts from people telling me we were going to go see a movie. I was down, but what movie?
“The Happening.”
……..yuk. I thought the movie looked ridiculously stupid as is and I fought them with their choice but in the end, it ended up being what we saw. I stopped at subway on the way to the theater with my friend Kar and we snuck my turkey 5-dollar footlong into the theater with her purse. Yeah… i’m one of THOSE people. But I was starved.
The movie continued to suck and Lauren and I mostly chose to laugh at the ridiculousness of the plot and acting. And while leaving, we made the decision to continue to mock the movie at Laurens house, and play a brutal, bloody game of spoons. (The game really did turn brutal we had chipped nails, scratches and bite marks everywhere!).
Only a few days before had I cried and complained to one of my friends that I was beyond done with boys. I was done LOOKING. That was my problem I was one of those girls who would meet a guy, and right away think “how would this person be as a boyfriend? Can I date them?” and thus leaving me a string of failed attempts and messes when it came to boys. I vowed to my friend that I would stop looking, concentrate on working and paying my bills, and just let w/e happen happen.
Anyways, back to after our game of spoons, Michael, Collin Lauren and I decided to go to Dennys. It was 1:30 AM but pancakes sounded DELICIOUS! They sounded especially good to our friends who couldn’t go with (hahaha).
We sat at the C.R dennys in the very back booth, being giggly and chatting still about the cuts on our arms from spoons and also how we were going to order pancakes and send pictures of them to our other friends who couldn’t come with us and rub it in. Within minuets of our milkshakes coming to our table, I saw the doors open and in came Ryan, another boy and another girl. We were far away and they sat at the very first table, Ryan on one side, the guy and girl on the other. I could only assume they were dating. I tried waving to get Ryans attention but he didn’t even look, so on the top of my lungs, I yelled Ryans name. Everyone in the store looked but him, and his waitress pointed me out to him.
He stood up and walked to our booth and started talking to Lauren and I. He had a big stupid smile on his face and I right away asked him, “Ryan are you drunk?”
“Noooo…..”
Awkward silence of me starring at him.
“Okay yeah.”
When Ryan is drunk, its very distinct. My friend Becca is the same way. Some people you can’t tell when they are drunk but others are very obvious in a fun way.
He was telling me he was just getting back from the bar when his other guy friend walked up to our table, clearly drunk also. I looked up at him. Cute. Very cute. More then cute my mind actually screamed at me handsome. But I don’t use that word do I? He just had that typical guy look. That look books describe… straight teeth, big smile, square jaw, beautiful eye. Typical guy look.
Ryan pointed to him and introduced us as his friend who is home on leave from Iraq.
Suddenly he wasn’t so good looking to me anymore. I knew those army guys. They all acted the same. Acted cocky, tough, said they could kick everyones ass who walks by them, overly protective and needy and worse of all, they like to take a million pictures of their abs. I could picture his myspace already. PLASTERED in half naked pictueres and beautiful blonde girls commenting on how they were dying to grate cheese on his washboard of a stomach.
I just sorta gave a half ass smile and turned back to my milkshake and choose to talk to Michael and Collin.
Ryan and his friend walked away and we all continued to talk amongst ourselves about school and fourth of July plans while chowing on breakfast items. I realized I still had yet to talk to Ryan about what he thought of my show, so I excused myself from the table and walked to sit next to him. I turned right to him and began ignoring his two other friends. I felt rude but I was dying to know. We were discussing the shows pros and cons, who sucked and who did amazing and while so doing this Ryans friend, his name is Joel, was referring to me as hot. I vaguely remember this part. I remember him saying it once, but according to him, he kept saying it. I sorta turned and glanced at him, thinking he was a drunk mess. Clearly drunk since I still had fadded pink occupying my cheeks and eyelids, no other makeup and my hair was in a ponytail ontop of my head. I was FAR from hot.
I ended up leaving with my friends and chose to Ignore Joel while leaving the table. I said bye, but it was more focused to Ryan and the girl next to Joel (she turned out to be Joels 17 year old sister, their sober cab).
That was all on sunday, and for the next week, my mind didn’t even phase back to that night except for when we talked about the movie and more fourth of July plans. By friday, I was sitting online at 2 AM and watching television when I got a call from Ryan. He invited me over to his house to drink and that his g/f Kari wanted me to come over.
2 AM seemed late to drink, but I thought, why not I have nothing better to do and he does live right around the corner. I hung up, fixed my makeup a tiny bit and ran over to Ryans. I literally ran because the neighborhood was dark and I didn’t want to die.
Arriving in one piece to see Kari and one of her girlfriends, they right away insisted on jagbombs and shoved one in my hand. Okay? Why not? I did a few with them and we walked into the garage where Ryan was setting up a beer pong table. My eyes strayed next to him and I saw Joel was there. I felt weird. He sorta glanced at me and looked away, no smile, no frown, no expression at all. I got annoyed kind of. I thought “omg already he is giving me that ‘whos the ugly chick, i’m to good to party with someone like that’ look.” I got over it. He was a stupid army guy he should be feeling lucky to party at all. Kari and I decided to play against Ryan and Joel in beer pong. Our big problem tho was we didn’t have plastic cups but choose to use glass instead.
…..word of advice, doesn’t work! I felt like I was playing a carnival game trying to win a big stuffed bear! After 15 mins of failed attempts from both sides we gave up. Glass was not going to work. We went inside and decided to play Categories, such a generic game. And being as I was in no way trying to impress anyone there like I usually would be, I decided to act as myself as I usually do with Ryan and Kari. I was tipsy, answering my questions truthfully. We were having so much fun and Joel only sort of began to talk. I was out of beer and glanced around the table to see what others had. Right infront of Joel was a bottle of Jack Daniels. I glanced up at him and he was looking at me, I assumed he read my mind because he asked if I wanted some. I tried saying no but then, I nodded, taking the bottle and having a drink. I expected the worest but it wasn’t that bad.
The rest is sort of a blurr after that. I remember failed attempts of us trying to see who was strongest and could pick one another up. I felt confident I could pick Joel up since he is not much more taller then I, but I couldn’t do it! I was shocked. Usually I could always pick boys up and boys have a hard time picking me up. I was awkward to pick up and heavy I guess. Not very well proportioned. But Joel picked me up with ease. I was drunkenly impressed.
I remember eating spray cheese also. Which makes me gag now writing it since I HATE that stuff, but, for some reason I sprayed it on my arm by accident, licked it off and found it pleasantly tasty.
Anything else that happened is gone from my mind. The next thing after all of that we were standing in the garage talking to Ryans mom for a long time. The sun was coming up, it had to be a warm 6 AM and one by one people went to bed. Ryan and Kari, soon Karis friend and then Ryans mom. I was alone with Joel. I glanced at him, not wanting to be awkward and asked if he wanted to go for a walk. A very drunk, 6 AM walk. He said yes and we started to walk around the neighborhood. To my suprise, he lived in the neighborhood. He lived right by Ryan, exactly parallel to my house, on the next street over.
We walked to Caseys genral store and bought Gatorade, and while he was checking out, I was leaning head into the counter looking at scratch offs. I hadn’t gotten one since my 18th birthday and they looked appealing. But I was broke.
“Hey, you should buy a scratch off!” I said a lot louder then needed. I stood up fast, sorta stumbled back and he caught me. He didn’t seem much like he wanted to, but he tossed 5 bucks on the counter and said, “okay what do you want?”
I was thankful the guy behind the counter I went to high school with because I didn’t have my I.D on me. I was going to buy all one dollar ones, but the lady also behind the counter helped me pick.
“You should get this one.” she said, pointing at a 5 dollar scratch off. A 5 dollar one, but I only have 5 dollars! That means I can only get one! I glanced at Joel quickly, and then back at the lady. “Okay we’ll do that one.”
She tore it off, scanned it and handed it to me. I grabbed a penny from the tray and began to scratch at it with Joel hovering over my shoulders. I didn’t read how it worked I just scratched the whole thing, and pressed it to my face trying to understand whats going on.
“Uhhhh, I think we won?” I lied and handed it to the boy I graduated with. “Can you just scan it for me?”
He laughed at me and took it, running it through the machine and then turning back to look. “You won 100 dollars.”
It took me a second to process that. “100 dollars? No shit?” and then as he took it out of the register and placed it on the counter. I grabbed it handing it to Joel and jumped up and down excited. He seemed really happy to and we left with our Gatorade and 90 more bucks then we came in with.
Anoka High School, where we both went, was directly across the street and we decided to walk the long path there. We continued talking as we had before, we talked about everything. We sat on the grassy hill overlooking the school and parking lot and talked about our experiences there. We didn’t sit long because I started to feel sick and then insisted we go back to Ryans. We walked down the path towords 7th avenue and I linked my arm with his. Not in a flirty way ether, just a friendly way I would with my gays or girls. I mostly did it so I didn’t fall over while walking. The funny thing is as we were getting to 7th avenue, my mom was driving down it and turning right onto the street we were headed to. I waved, but she didn’t even notice me. She was going home from her boyfriends house.
The walk wasn’t long back to Ryans, Joel showed me where he lived, and we went into Ryans house straight into the living room. We found some blankets and layed down still chatting. It had to be 8, 9 in the morning at this point, and I still didn’t see him as a boyfriend type (I woulda thrown myself all over him if that were the case). To me he felt more like a long time friend. I felt like I learned so much about him. The most important thing I had learned was that he hated the army and wasn’t at all like the rest of the boys i met. He didn’t want to go back, he didn’t want to kill people he didn’t want to be in the army anymore. This changed my whole perspective of him.
We layed side by side still talking, and I found a little chest right next to my head. I opened it and pulled the first thing I saw in it out. It was the first curious george book. I opened it, turned to him and began reading it. I read it in different voice, and read it just like a kindergarten teacher would to her class. He laughed at me and smiled and told me I was the biggest dork he ever met. And then we fell asleep.
We woke only a few hours later, me completely turned and scooted away from him and feeling sick to my stomach. The rest of our friends were in the room with us playing wii Mario kart and I ran to the bathroom thinking I was going to puke.
The day proceeded to us all hanging out again all day. We played badmitten, and went bowling at Brunswick. Joel didn’t say a word to me all day. He was acting like he did the night before and I thought maybe he had an interest in karis other friend. Maybe I talked too much? Oh well, I gave up the thought. He was going back to Iraq anyways soon so why should I care?
We drank again that night and did as we did the other night, talked about every thing we could. We were very comftorable talking but only when we were drunk it seemed. The next day we went seperate ways. He had stuff to do and I had to get ready for my call backs. Call backs were a long process I read for one part and spent a long time siting around. Ryan texted me and invited me to go see Wall-E with kari and Joel. Kari and I had just been saying how much we wanted too see that movie, so I said yes, and then I got excited. Was this a date? A double date? I borrowed money from my mom, and decided to meet them at Bostons. When I got there, it was only Joel and Ryan and they were finishing up food and told me we were meeting kari at the theater.
I was getting kind of nervous, wondering if it was a date, and then I decided to try and not think of it that way because he was leaving soon and this would only end in a failed attempt like the last ones did. Ryan and Kari prob just wanted someone there to distract joel. But Joel bought my ticket for me. I panicked. Is this a date?! What do I do!? It’s a kids movie tho!!!! A kids movie that I actually wanted to watch! Do we hold hands? Do we kiss? I ignored it and spent most of my time talking to Kari to avoid awkward first date feelings. I succeeded. And I also loved the movie. We were all going to go to Dennys but Ryan and Kari decided to ditch us. Just Joel and I go to Dennys? I sorta felt like this was a set up, but, I went. Joel offered to buy me food but I declined just the way he offered to give me a chunk of the 100 we won on the scratch off. I said no to that also.
There we were, at Dennys, again. Right where we first met, but we talked this time. I liked talking to him. I felt like I could tell him anything without him judging me. I don’t go to school, he didn’t care. I didn’t have a job at the time, he didn’t seem to mind. I felt myself with him.
I dropped him off at home after Dennys (Since my car had been at Bostons) and he asked me if I wanted to come with him the next day to go get a tattoo. I smiled and told him to call me as soon as he woke up and I would love to go. He did just that, I woke up the next day to him calling me. It was his last day before he had to go back to Iraq and I felt kinda lucky he wanted to hang out with me. We went to Wingnut and I watched them ink him up, and after we went out to eat at Panera. I didn’t want to leave Panera because I assumed he would want to go hang out with others and I would never see him again, but he invited me to his house. I met his family, and we sat in the basement playing N64. I love video games and I kicked his butt in Mario Kart and SuperSmash brothers. We spent the whole day together, and the whole night. By 12 A.M we were laying outside getting chewed up by mosquitos, but I didn’t mind. I just wanted to spend as much time with him as I could. He was leaving at 6 A.M until April. It was weird how much I had really started to like him. I still remember every detail of everything we talked about. The fact that he smelt like subway at one point for a brief second, when hed sing quietly to himself but towords me and it always made me smile. The most important detail was that I told him I liked him a lot, and that he was prob going to think I am a freak, but he told me he really liked me also. He said a few other things but I wont say exactly what it was because it might get back to that person. Another thing that made me happy was when I confronted him about being so quiet.
“You barely said anything to me the night at Ryans and you didn’t talk to me all day saturday until I started drinking and talked to you, I thought you hated me?”
He just looked at me and smiled. He explained to me that hes a really shy person and actually thought I was very beautiful and was too scared to talk to me.
Beautiful? Me? I been called cute, yeah, hot, that also. But never beautiful. Not even past boyfriends ever called me beautiful and even when I wore little makeup and had pink streaks in my hair this very attractive guy was to scared to talk to me because I was beautiful!? That alone completely made me melt. People always say “Find the guy who thinks you’re beautiful even at your ugliest.”
I had to go home because his mom was going to be awake soon to take him to the airport and he had to get back into uniform. He walked me home, and I cried. I tried not to because it seemed silly but I burst into tears and he hugged me in my driveway telling me he would talk to me everyday, and that we could write letters and before I knew it he would be home for good. I nodded, kissed him, and watched him walk away.
I went inside feeling sad and got online right away to check facebook. I was awake and hadn’t been on all day why not? I am very glad I did because he messaged me saying he still had an hour before he left and if I wanted to come say goodbye and see him in his uniform. I was just glad to get to see him one more time since my earlier goodbye felt incomplete.
I put on my running shoes, and quietly snuck out my front door so that my mom wouldn’t ask where I was going at 6 A.M. I ran as fast as I could thru the yards of our neighbors to get to his house and when I saw him looking spiffy in his uniform I jumped into his arms and hugged him.
I had my camera so we took some pictueres, sat around and talked and then I had to say goodbye. I gave him a long hug and kissed him and didn’t want to stop hugging him. I knew it would be the last time I got to hug him for a long long time and I wondered if I would even get to see him when he got home. Would he meet another girl online while in Iraq? Or get back with an ex or just completely start hating me all together? I went back home, layed in bed with grief and spent most of my day between the computer and bed. That was all the morning of July 2nd, and on July 9th we decided to just make it official and date. And we have talked, written and etc everyday since. I worry about him alot but if I knew he wasn’t something worth waiting for, I wouldn’t waste my time. But I know he is something special and I think of him all the time.
It is so weird how all this time, the guy I would end up being crazy for was in plain site of my house. I always wonder if I ever saw him at Anoka. We did grace those halls at the same time long ago, and little did I know of all the times I watched the football games, or heard his name announced over the intercom, or saw his picture in the yearbook that he would be the guy I got along with the best and would be the craziest for.
I know no one understands how I feel, or why things are how they are and I know lots of people are probably sitting there thinking “How can you really like someone that you don’t get to be with everyday?”
But I think this is good because we are able to get to know eachother and learn stuff from eachother and look forward too seeing eachother without the physical stuff getting in the way. I started off getting to know him as a friend. I didn’t meet him and start thinking “boyfriend material”. I was able to act myself, and he has treated me the best out of all relationships. Sometimes when I hear of my friends relationships I think of how lucky I am.
But that was a long story, long blog, but people asked and now maybe people can understand where I am coming from. It is weird how right when you stop trying to look for someone, they stumble right into your lap.
