Don't even think about asking me why I gave that crazy guy's man-friend my phone number. I couldn't tell you for the life of me. Why I agreed to go out with sir crazy hair is a mystery to me, too. I guess I decided that I was committed to the bit so I might as well keep it up. Plus, it never hurts to have someone hanging around to call you cute or pretty or whatever. Just as long as they don't get in the way of your dreams. When your dreams are in fact to be called cute or pretty or whatever, there's less chance of trouble.
Zach amused me to say the least. He was strange and confident and smart enough. I might have felt intimidated, except I only cared about being smart enough to manage my finances and win more trophies. I was careful on our first date not to reveal to him just how important winning those pageants really was to me. I figured then he would think I was crazy, and if it turned out I actually did want to be with him, I didn't want that happening right off the bat. Let them get connected to you first. Then you can slowly let the crazy come out. Though in Zach's case, I guess letting the crazy come out right away didn't work out so bad for him. He ended up with me, after all.
Well anyway, once he called me, I decided not to let him take charge too much so I suggested our date location. Given I wasn't sure what his finances were like, I didn't go too up scale. You don't want to shame the guy, but you don't want to insult him either. I figured Louie's pizzeria was a fine choice. When he met me there five minutes late (probably not wanting to look to anxious or something) he laughed and said, "It's a good thing my roommate wasn't the one who ended up calling you. He hates pizza."
I sneered. "Who in their right mind hates pizza?"
He just shook his head. "Dude, I guess my roommate."
"So who's going out with me?" I asked. "You or your roommate."
"Who's it look like, baby?" he asked, holding his arms out and thrusting his pelvis forward just enough to be unappealing without being totally disgusting.
"It looks like it's about to be nobody," I answered.
He stood up straight again and pressed his hands to his heart. "That hurts," he said.
I couldn't help but smile, just a little, just enough to give him hope. "Come on, let's see if you can guess my toppings," I challenged him.
Surprising, he got pretty close. He guessed mushroom, black olive, and hamburger, but I informed him that fungus is gross and that I prefer green pepper, black olive, and hamburger. He told me I was missing out and proceeded to order what I had requested.
While we waited for the pizza, he asked me if I went to the college. I said nope and asked if he did, already figuring the answer was yes or else he wouldn't ask me if I went there. He said what I already knew ("yes"), and waited for me to ask him what he was studying, which I politely did. He then talked about the tough choice between chemistry and biology for a while, somehow without sneaking in any pick-up lines or crude jokes until the end when he said, "Maybe you can help me decide," and giving me a little wink. I rolled my eyes and he laughed. And finally our pizza arrived.
As we munched away, he asked me what it felt like being the cutest girl in the world. I reminded him it was just the cutest young woman in the county and he said, "Whatever." He didn't repeat his question, so I didn't answer it. He asked instead what else I like to do when I'm not fondling jewelry and I told him I like movies and art and playing the piano. I left out the part where I learned the piano just so I could play at pageants and that art and movies can sometimes be incorporated into the Q&A portion of a pageant. I mean, I did enjoy these things apart from pageants, at least the movies, so it wasn't like I was deceiving him or anything.
He said everyone likes movies and asked me to name three of my favorites. I don't remember for sure what I said, but I think one of them was Love, Actually. He said he liked classic comedies, like Meet The Parents and Zoolander. I just shook my head.
Overall, it wasn't such a bad date. He must have agreed because he nonchalantly suggested we go out again, to which I nonchalantly agreed. I even let him pick the venue for that next time.
-----
It turned out Bridget and I were able to find some normal people around campus. Quite a few of them, actually. There were several booths set up in the student center trying to get new students like ourselves to join various groups. Religious groups, political groups, social clubs, musical groups, intramural sports. I figured it had been a while since I played volleyball. I might as well give it another try in a low to no pressure environment. I tried to get Bridget to sign up with me, but I think she was afraid of breaking a nail. She wandered off to the sorority tables to try to see if she could decide between her top two choices based on what the girls were wearing. I continued to wander around, discovering fantasy club, kendo club, American sign language club, and numerous acapella choirs. The choirs seemed like they would be fun, if I knew how to sing. Kendo and fencing were tempting - there was some guilty appeal in the idea of hitting other people with fake swords. I wondered if I could get Bridget to learn sign language with me. I figured it might be fun to communicate without actually speaking, but maybe Bridget liked speaking too much to make that work.
Eventually, I decided this was my time to try new things and signed up for both Kendo and sign language. I politely declined when I walked back past the political and religious groups trying to grab my attention. Those things were more personal than group activities for me. Very much unlike Bridget's view of womanhood as she sought to bond with the sisters of Kappa Kappa Delta or whatever other sisterhood she was talking to when I found her.
"Want to learn sign language?" I asked her when she finally noticed me and turned away from a girl who looked to be even more of a party nut than her. I handed her a flyer.
She wrinkled up her nose and asked, "Why would I want to do that?"
I wished I already knew some sign language so I could say something to her that she wouldn't understand, thus annoying her into wanting to learn just to figure out what it was I said, but since I didn't, I just shrugged and decided I could always try that little trick later after I learned a few key phrases. "Did you find what you were looking for?" I asked instead.
"Not really," she said as she wrapped her arm through mine. "I still can't decide which will be more fun. Maybe I can pledge for both. Surely they won't both want me, will they?"
I knew she was fishing for a compliment so I just shook my head and said, "No, surely not."
She let out a little "uh!" and punched me in the shoulder with her free hand.
"Hey, what was that for?" I asked laughing.
"For being a jerk of a friend," she said. "Now come on, let's go see what they might have to eat around here. I'm starving."
-----
As our relationship flourished, I quickly came to recognize Alyse as both a wonderful friend and fantastic lover. She knew so many random things, about art, cinema, literature, ... other things. It filled me with joy just standing near her. I hadn't been much for PDA before I met her, but with Alyse, sometimes I just couldn't help but lean over and kiss her in public. By some miracle, she seemed to enjoy my presence, too.
I think my photography helped a lot. I'm not a brilliant photographer, but I wasn't horrible either. Alyse's love of art carried over to love of the photos I took. She actually helped me realize that some of them were even better than I had thought them to be. Some photos that I would have just deleted were described by Alyse as "mesmerizing" or "unique." Now, I often took a description of my work as "unique" to mean "unpleasant", but whenever Alyse said it, it seemed like a good thing and it made me look at my work differently. I had been pretty run-of-the mill in my subject matter, but Alyse inspired me to try new things, more abstract things. Many of these new endeavours fared better than my more mainstream work, the work I had actually considered good.
I'd like to think I was able to reciprocate by helping Alyse a bit with her writing. She said she wanted to write something an intelligent young man such as myself (her words) could appreciate both on the surface and at a deeper level. I think what she really wanted was something that made people feel smart for understanding, but that wasn't too complex to intimidate them. I suggested this to her at one point after we got engaged and, with a charming laugh and captivating smile, she more or less admitted it to be true. Alyse was no fool. She knew I wasn't any kind of genius, but she always treated me like I was the most brilliant man around. Sometimes, I did surprise myself with insights that provided rather helpful to her and her work. She never acted surprised by them though. Instead, she said things like, "You're always able to help me out of a tough spot." And then she'd blush and kiss me and we'd end up forgetting what we were even talking about.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone who saw us together that I asked her to marry me after having known her for only six months. I think that short dating period was why so many people said we were too young. We really weren't that young; I was twenty-four and she was twenty-three when we got engaged. But when you have a short engagement, people often think it's because you're "too young", not realizing it's because you just know how much you love this person and that you want to start the rest of your lives together now. Fast engagements aren't for everyone, but they were for me and Alyse. Though once you hear the rest of my story, I think you'll understand why a deep-seeded part of me will always wish we had dated longer before getting married and deciding to start a family.
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