Dropping the Baggage

The first time I saw him he was on stage, playing guitar in a band that was opening for the Violent Femmes at Endicott College, mid-nineties. I don't remember a thing about it. I attended a dizzying rash of shows in the mid-nineties that ended with an after-hours party at Lupo's, drinking Coke although the beer was free and chatting with members of Superchunk, and the next day wanting to get drunk so badly I literally cried. I had stopped drinking in 1993, and no cool music scene was going to drag me back into that Hell again, so I laid off of shows for a long, long time after that. The band who opened for the Femmes? I don't remember a thing about them, but I don't much remember how the Femmes were, either.

The next I saw him was 2004, and my first thought was "this is the sexiest man I have ever seen in my life."

You may not agree. "Too skinny," you may say. I say, "Bring it on."

Also, there is something about his eyes.

I didn't actually meet him until 2008. We knew of each other a little bit by then, but didn't actually know each other. In 2008 I was in the middle of a long hiatus from anything resembling romance. I was burnt out and beaten down, and he had a girlfriend anyway, so it seemed like it would be safe and fun to let myself have a huge crush on him and not do anything about it. Except the more I got to know him--in bits and pieces, over months--the more I wanted to do something about it. I wrestled with that and wrestled with that, and just when I thought, "would one innocent coffee date be so wrong??" he told me, "I'm moving down to Florida in two weeks," and that nailed it. It was not to be. "Let's have coffee, then," I said, and we did, and I got to know him even more. He never mentioned the girlfriend (and hadn't in months). He hugged me goodbye. We did not exchange contact info.

He was in Florida for over a year.

I ran into him in early 2010, and we had a pleasant chat. He was single but I was seeing somebody by then, somebody I liked quite well, so I didn't press for anything. I still felt that pull, though; that I could not deny. Well, whatever...he WAS a good guy, anyway. "Could I look you up on Facebook?" I asked, and he said yes.

"How are you?" I messaged once or twice. Doing okay, working hard, nothing special. Happy to be back in Massachusetts.

I didn't hear anything from him for a long time, then he popped up on my Facebook this past October, so I messaged a friendly hello. Why not, right? He was a good guy. I liked him. It's nice to say hi. I hoped he's doing well, and so forth.

He replied. I replied. Then he asked me out on a date.

It felt like I was suddenly in a John Hughes movie, "Sixteen Candles" or something: I was overjoyed. I was ecstatic! I didn't care where we went or what we did or even if he had suddenly turned dull and obnoxious in the three years since I pined for him like I was thirteen years old and he was a rock star (which he wasn't, the band was long gone, and he worked a trade. He was an art school graduate, though, and how hot is that? To this chick, pretty much very). We were going on a date, and he had asked me. It was the most promising thing that had happened to me romantically since...since who knew when. Maybe ever?

That is how it finally started.

My daughter was turning twelve in December and I had, incredibly, agreed to throw a dance party for forty in our house. I hate parties in general, and hosting them specifically, and was acutely aware that forty tweens jumping up and down to "Sexy and I Know It" would not be easy to contend with. My reasoning was, "she's the most social creature on the planet, this daughter of mine, daughter of one of the more solitary creatures on the planet, me; in a year or two these kids will all be sneaking off into bedrooms or lighting joints on my back porch, so best to ease into this now rather than get thrown into it then, when the shock will kill me."

We blacklit the dining room, cleared it of furniture, and pasted up flourescent and glow-in-the-dark stars on the walls and ceiling. She talked me into dropping $30 on a strobe light at Spencer's. The stereo shelf system was her birthday present from me. I bought a dozen bottles of soda and a vegetable platter, and tween-proofed my house (it's a clumsy age, always knocking things over) while working two jobs (training for my new one at a different hospice, while working almost full-time as a per diem at my old one) and trying to get some sort of a grip on Christmas.

He calls me almost every day. He's had dinner with us and even hung around to watch "Glee"(and hated it), and tries to smoke as little as his addicted brain will allow him when he's with us. "I don't like the thought of being a bad example," he told me. "Oh, don't worry, gatekeeping is my job," I said. "I know, but still," he replied.

"Uh, I've got to ask you," I said on the phone about a week ago. "She's got this party going on, and it would be stupid for me to be the only grown-up, but I don't know any of the parents well. I think it would be best to have a guy around, anyway. Crowd control. So could you...?"

"I really don't want to...wow...I don't really know what to do with kids. A dance party!"

"A glow-in-the-dark dance party. About forty kids." He laughed and said again, "I really don't want to...but I'll think about it."

He won't do it, I thought. I almost hope he says no, I thought. We can be just friends and I can give up all these other ideas I keep getting about "more", and I was silly to think like that anyway. When was the last time a man went out of his way for me? If he did I'd probably get all jammed up about it. I've got all this relationship baggage, all this emotional baggage, and it's going to get messy and ridiculous. We both have other things going on anyway; I'm in job flux, driving a rental car, and setting things up to go back to school to eventually become a Nurse Practitioner, and he's trying to run a business and straighten out some old, old, old issues that keep tripping him up. We should keep this friendly. He'll say no. Why would he ever say yes?

I stopped by his place to say hi on the way home from work while the kids had dinner with their father, and he smiled and said, "Well, I decided I'll help you out at the party."

Instantly I was suffused with joy. Instantly. "You will?" I cried and threw my arms around him.

He laughed, "Yeah, and thank my friend for that. He keeps teasing me non-stop calling me 'the chaperone', but he said, 'dude, if you don't do it she'll never forgive you,' and I realized he was probably right!"

I laughed. I laughed and laughed and buried my face in his arm. I didn't protest.

I am starting to understand something about relationships I have never understood before.

The party went about as well as you could imagine it could--other than one of the boys getting a flesh wound on his cheek when the kids lost their minds throwing glowstick bracelets (you can see how Lord of the Flies could come to pass, easily), and having to herd them back indoors from time to time, they played "Sexy and I Know It" about five times, ate seven pizzas, and texted my daughter the next day that her party was "epic!"

"I wouldn't call it 'epic'," he told me on the phone today. "But it wasn't that bad! I guess it was epic if you're twelve."

"You helped a lot. I would have lost my mind doing that alone."

He didn't protest. "I'll call you tomorrow. Next week will be busy with work, but I want to see you. I'm looking forward to seeing you again."

"Me too."

I have this picture in my head. I've been carrying around all this baggage forever. It comes with me into every relationship I've ever had, and takes up a lot of room. I wear a knapsack tricked out like I'm going to spend a week hiking the Brooks Range, and have an unweildy Samsonite suitcase in each hand complete with sturdy locks I've lost the keys to.

I can put them down. I see him walking toward me and smiling, smiling because he's very happy to see me and I smile at him because I feel the same way. We are both used to walking alone, but since we've met each other, we no longer need to. Can it really be that simple? I can put down my bags and freely take his hand and walk beside him. Later I'll describe the contents to him, the mess and the disappointments and the hurts, but it doesn't have to drag me down anymore. Or us.

I know that there is a point in life where all the difficulty can be walked beyond, to a place where it is happiness to just breathe in and out. Life is life, but that place exists, I know because I've been there, and often too. Long, happy relationships seem to work the same way--past the struggle and the difficulty is the simple fact of "we are together, and I am happy with you."

Is it really that simple?

(This is an unfolding story. I will let you know how it goes.)