The Story of Us

Ah. Here we are. November 6th. Now, I am really not terribly sentimental. I celebrate major candy associated holidays, birthdays, and my wedding anniversary. That is enough to keep track of in my selfish little book. However, November 6th is a little special, at least for me.

Anybody care to gander a guess?

Anybody?

Oh, you are so good!

Yes. It is the anniversary of Charles and my first real date. Real date in that it involved a car and money and a movie, as opposed to the night of November the 5th, the day we first made googly eyes at each other, me thinking he was just being, well, drunk and that I was handy, and he thinking that there might be something between us. Good thing he was right, rather than me.

But I am getting ahead of things, here.

Let me tell you the tale of how we became the Royal Couple, to our friends. (Remember, this was in the way back days, when both the Prince and Princess of Wales were not just alive, but to appearances, still in love and married, with children.)

I was a geeky new college freshman, the first week of class, actually, I think it was a day or two before class officially began. I was sitting on the grass with the other four freshmen on my floor, pondering what we should do about the gold Porsche that had been habitually parking in front of the fire hydrant. The fire hydrant that the fire trucks would attach their hoses to in order to put out the theoretical fire that would race through our disgracefully wired tinder-box of a dorm. The first day we moved in, it was drilled into our heads that the place would likely become completely engulfed in 45 seconds from the start of a fire. We were taking no chances. We were also very happy that we lived on the bottom floor, and thus would be able to just climb out the windows and scale the bushes to make our escape.

Clearly, the atrocious gold Porsche needed to be taught a lesson. (Besides, who the hell goes to college driving a gold Porsche, I ask you? Talk about crass. Especially because most of us didn't have the price of a Whopper, without cheese, on 99 cent Wednesday, in our pockets. We were poor freshmen in our little clique, well except for one of us, but we were cutting her slack, plus, she had no car, gold or otherwise.) Yes, there was campus security, but all they would do was hand out tickets, something like $2 a pop. The gold Porsche just laughed at such a fine and continued to use the No Parking area in front of the hydrant as his own personal space.

Well, what would make the Porsche sad, we wondered? Well, to find that all four of the tires were flat, of course. So, the five of us set about letting the air out of all the tires. It was about this time that our floor Resident Assistant (she of the keys and her own single room), Margaret, came up with this very nice looking young man. She had asked her friend Charles (you knew it was Charles, didn't you, clever pants) if he wanted to meet some nice freshmen and he said, "sure." So, he sat on the lawn and chatted to us while we continued our lesson in inappropriate parking of cheesy gold Porsches. He remembers that I was cute and didn't look or talk to him. I remember feeling completely awkward and that he was way too attractive to talk to. He was taking a year off after his Sophomore year, working graveyard shift in a produce warehouse, while he figured out what the hell he was going to do with a Poly-Sci major. (Answer: Return to school and get a second major in Psych, and then figure it all out later.)

So, there we were, each smitten with the other, so we do what normal young idiots do. He goes out with my floormate (the rich one) and I date this nice but annoying putz. As my rich floormate is also dating four other guys (remember, this is the first week of college!!) including the bell hop from the hotel she and her mom stayed at their first night in Portland, Charles happily backs off after the one date with her (she took him out for coffee and pie). In another odd turn, it happens that the bell hop went to high school with me, graduating the year prior. He only went out with her once or twice and he paid, the chivalrous fool.

Flash forward to the night of November 5th, 1983. My floor decides to host a party. The advantage to going to my tiny liberal arts college in the early '80s, is that all drinking is policed by the campus, as it is private property. The learned heads had felt for decades, probably since before prohibition, if the college was even around then, that if underage drinking were looked on with a completely blind eye, not to mention a deaf ear and congested nose, the students would stay on campus to do their drinking and not drive off campus to do so. They were mostly right, especially because freshmen were required to live on campus or with their parents, and most Sophomores chose to do so, as well.

We decide on a sort of tropical theme and make my friend Dolo's patented Killer Punch. I don't remember what all was in it but remember we mixed it in large plastic garbage cans and it had copious quantities of rum, everclear, and Hawaiian Punch, to mask the taste of it all. It probably had other liquid ingredients as well. Also, there was cut up fruit that marinated in the mixture and was served as the only "food". As we had no money, our rich floormate funded it, someone with a license purchased it (maybe Margaret, the RA?) and we charged $5 to get in, for all you could drink and dancing to really loud music. We had a good turnout and we all took turns at the door, collecting money and stamping hands with someone's bunny stamp. During my shift, Charles appeared to keep me company, he being rather buzzed on punch, and me, just a little bit so. We laughed and joked and he stamped bunnies up and down his arms, which for some reason we thought was hysterical. You had to be there.

We then went down and danced and talked, (well, yelled), over the music. Afterward, we went upstairs with my poor roommate, who was really drunk, and stood on each side of her in the bathroom stall while she brought up everything she had in her, and then some. He patted her back while I held her hair, and we made googly eyes over her heaving body.

Que romantico!

Really.

He then asked me out to a movie the next night, a Sunday night.

I of course accepted, thinking he was just being nice, as a friend, because why the hell would this lovely, handsome, charming man who did not flee at the sight of a vomiting young woman want to go out with me? As I got in the car, I told him the following: "I can't stay late, I have to study and I have 8:00 class tomorrow." He thought I was trying to be nice but really didn't want to go out with him, silly man. I was just being honest, because, hey, I was a Biology major with her eye on med school. Science classes always started at 8 am as the afternoons were devoted to lab, no extra credit for that fun. He took me to The Big Chill, and we played at being commandos in the parking lot. At the end of the movie, as we were sitting in the seats, he looked over and our eyes met. I swear the room did one of those "wah-wah-wah" things and then, finally, he kissed me.

So, there you have it. Love, or at least lust, at first sight. Aren't I the lucky one? It took me a whole week before I told him so. Didn't want to rush things, don't you know.