When did you know your spouse was 'The One?'

You know, there was this other time, too:

I was in Kabul in 2001, studying marine biology. My student visa had just expired, and I was a little hesitant to remain in the area. The cicadas are hell in October.

I hopped a train to the neighboring city of Paris. From there, I hailed cabs and hot-air balloons before finally reaching Transylvania.

I stayed the night in a Hilton, but was drawn to a large, dark castle looming over the palm-tree lined courtyard outside my room.

The following evening I knocked on the friendly yellow castle door. A dark, imposing figure answered my knocks and invited me in. His name was The Count. But I called him 5-6-7. 5-6-7 and I shot pool and puppies until the sun came up. We laughed at his snuff films and dined in his torture chambers.

Before I returned to my room at the Hilton, I ventured in a for a little kiss. 5-6-7 took the opportunity to plunge his teeth into my neck. I've had a hard time sleeping ever since.

I never knocked on that yellow door again. The night 5-6-7 and I shared was perfection. I didn't want to taint it by becoming Facebook friends.

Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't just a little scared. 5-6-7 might have been The One.

 

I call bullshit.

Neither of those stories has anything to do with YGBFKM scratching his nuts and emerging with a cubic zirconium.

 

This reads like Thomas Friedman's first draft of a porn novel.

You have a gift, CB.

 

"Shooting pool and puppies until the sun came up ..." Genius.

 

Reading CB's latest post made me Kandahard.

 

The first time I ever talked to my wonderful wife on the phone (we met online) she asked me to marry her...
I thought she was crazy, but instead I said we should meet and have a date instead.
She insisted that instead of a simple date we should go down to Texas and get married.
I relented, but after our first date I don't think we have spent more than a few days apart.
I think had a just said OK and just married her that night, things would be just the same.

 

I totally forgot he ever had those. I wonder where I put them?

 

We were both very young, teenagers really. I was 16-17, she was 14. There was a clear attraction, but our classmates kind of made clear we couldn't act on it. It was the 1980s, and we knew it was something with potential. But even then we knew we shouldn't.

Then a few things happened . . .

We officially broke up and I dated this exotic chick. But she passed away, sadly.

I was stuck and couldn't move for a while, and she was moving too fast (her body nearly faded into mist over a period of months, but she got through thanks to a brilliant friend) . . . I stayed in the States, she went to England for a while. Then, we had to put any thought of romance on hold as I had family problems.

My brother came back to life, my sister went through some really weird stuff - her life itself was really in limbo for a while there - and I decided to die for the common good.

But I didn't really die; I was actually being experimented on. I know, I know. Long story.

Anyway, the woman who I always knew would be my wife rescued me, and we finally were able to be together, at long last.

Now there's some issues with me and this helmet I'm wearing, and a mystical ruby that's causing me to have a pretty bad temper, and she's not too sure. But I think we'll work it out.

Soulmates always do.

(this post dedicated to departed fellow geek sportschick)

 

Why the hell would you want that?

 

She was just 16 years old. Leave her alone, they said. But we were separated by fools who didn't know what love was yet. I told her if I could fly, I'd pick her up and take her into the night and show her a love like she's never seen. Ever seen. It was like having a dream where nobody has a heart. It was like having it all and watching it all fall apart. I would wait 'til the end of time for her and do it again. I couldn't measure my love, there was nothing to compare it to.

 

I was aimlessly driving down the highway one day, and then it hit me, it was like the highway was a metaphor for my life. The miles behind me, loves that I have lost. Broken hearts lying victim of some game I didn't even know I was playing. What was in store for me on the road ahead?

Then ... an epiphany! It was like I suddenly had good luck. It finally struck. Hard. Like lightning from the blue.

There were words flashing in my head. I normally don't think like that, but there the words were. "EVERY", "HIGHWAY", "LEADS", "ME", "BACK", "TO" and "YOU". It took me a while to scramble them, my first version was, "You leads me back to every highway", and I thought to myself, "Fuck!", I'll be on stuck on this highway of loves I've lost forever. I will live without love.

Then I came to my senses and realized that every highway leads me back to you. You? Yeah! My best friend I've never had anything but a platonic relationship with! How could this NOT be the highway I was on?

So I go to my best girlfriend's house. And despite the risk of wrecking our friendship with romantic involvement and the fact that I had never once indicated that I loved her in any way other than being friends, I held her.

All was said and done.

The search had come full circle. Our destines were one. I think in the back of our minds we wondered how this miraculously happened, given that we had given zero indication of any romantic interest whatsoever, but in the moment we accepted our fate.

But caught up in a heady mix of sudden love and bewilderment that tiny smidge of doubt caused me to go a little haywire. To quote Roy Wally, I want a LOT haywire. I turned and said with a firmness I've never showed in my life.

"So if you ever loved me? SHOW ME THAT YOU GIVE A DAMN!"

Now she knew for certain the man I really was. Truthfully, I got pissed off, suddenly, and sort of violently. It was kind of disturbing, really. Any normal human being would have been kind of scared. My words came completely out of the blue and out of context from our embrace.

But she was cool with it. Somehow, deep down inside, she knew I had been living for a dream, loving for a moment. Taking on the world? Shit. She knew that was just my style.

Then she touched my hand, and I mean, I was stunned given my outburst just seconds earlier where she could just have easily assumed I was going to belt her with it. I thought I had self-cock-blocked for sure.

I could hear her whisper, "the search was over, love was right before my eyes."

Uh, what?

To be totally honest, I found her response to my plea a bit more than I expected. I didn't expect her to give that easily, frankly. I kind of thought I'd have to work for it a bit. I kind of wanted that period where we had a crush and had some playful banter and innuendo that implied we wanted each other. But she jumped straight to love? Yeah. I wasn't ready for that.

And another thing, for her, love was definitely tied to sex. That's cool. I'm all up for sex, but it's like she was throwing herself at me. Little too easy. Didn't know that about her, to be honest, or I might not have been so interested. I had to ask myself, if she's throwing herself at me over this, what other crap is just giving it up for?

I recoiled at the thought of her throwing herself at anyone. I had this vision of her going down on Survivor at the county fair.

So though I'd like to say this is my actual tale of finding "the one", it's not. I still have a burning heart.

 

That's it. I'm calling shotglass.