It’s about time I get to writing about this. The Big Meeting. The Close Encounter. The COVID Interlude. How did it go? Was there a Love Connection? “Will there be a second date?” as MAGA-ass Chuck Woolery would ask before going to commercial and coming back in Two and Two? Read on.
So…. let’s start here. As previously mentioned, E. and I were supposed to meet in North Carolina back in June/early July. I may have the dates wrong because COVID has blurred all sense of time for me, but we had plane tickets and hotel reservations all lined up for Charlotte and Asheville, so it was going to happen. We were excited to finally see what was what, to find out if the reality would match our texts, video calls, and the intensity of our correspondence over the prior three months. Then… two days before my trip, Governor Cuomo in all his wisdom, issued a directive requiring all travelers from certain states to quarantine for 14 days upon their return. North Carolina was on the list. North Carolina, which suddenly had spiking COVID cases that could potentially get worse. The quarantine didn’t bother me as much as the spiking cases because I’m fairly solitary to start with and quarantining comes naturally. What bothered me was the COVID spike. I had spent three months being really careful, avoiding stores and restaurants, wearing my mask, and maximizing the benefits of being a natural introvert. But the day I dropped M. off with Ex before my trip, M. got really upset about the danger of me flying on a plane with the COVID risk and then not seeing me for three weeks if I had to quarantine to keep her safe. Tears from a six year-old girl are powerful things. They got me thinking about risk and reward and timing.
After talking it over with E., we decided to postpone our already long-delayed meeting. It was not an easy decision. Based on my past experience with long distance situations, I knew that this type of delay and disappointment could potentially derail what we had been building. When someone lives far away and your only contact is a telephone, and you have to cancel a long-anticipated visit together, it’s extremely easy to get demoralized. To E.’s credit, she was totally understanding about my concerns, even though I think she would have been fine with proceeding too. But I’d been a mole man for months, counting rolls of toilet paper, living off of Ramen noodles, and watching 32,000 people die from COVID in New York since March, a sickening tragedy. I wanted our first meeting to be free of preoccupations, and I just wasn’t mentally there. So we agreed to postpone.
We then had to decide when and where to meet. Somewhere relatively safe, where COVID was being managed by competent people, i.e., not the South. After bouncing around a few ideas — Vermont, New York, D.C. — we settled on….. Boston.
Boston. Home of the Red Sox, Celtics, and Bruins. Boston. Home of Paul Revere, Sam Adams, and the start of the American Revolution. Boston. Where I, a lover, not a fighter, almost got into a fistfight with a much larger knuckledragger by accident on my birthday 25 years ago, after he didn’t take kindly to my sister rebuffing his advances. Boston. A place I’d been to many times growing up but still had no fucking clue where anything was.
Boston had what we needed. Low COVID numbers, walkability, and open eating and drinking establishments. It was also 45 minutes from Portsmouth, NH, my birthplace, where we planned to go for a couple of days afterwards, assuming all went well. And this was an assumption, after all. Although we’d shared a lot of intimacy in our months-long relationship (I guess it’s safe to use that word; relationships take many forms), being together in person, in 3-D is vastly different. You can’t smell someone on video. You can’t see all of their mannerisms and how they carry themselves. Not to mention being together on a daily basis, for hours on end, for 5 days. There were plenty of potential pitfalls. I didn’t expect it to go bad. We had gotten to know each other extremely well and had seen each other on video many times, but I couldn’t discount the small possibility of it sucking, so I assumed nothing. No, that’s not totally right. I hoped for the best. You almost have to if you’re going to take this kind of leap; you have to hope it’s going to go well, or there’s no way you’re going to do it. So I was stubbornly optimistic about this, even if I reserved 2% of my worst case risk analysis for: “Oh fuck, this could really suck if it turns out we don’t have a real connection in person.”
Enough about the logistics, you boring Virgo fuck, what happened???
August 3, 2020. She flew to Boston from Louisiana. I drove from White Plains. She landed before I left. She informed me that my mail order bride had arrived, and told me to arrange for prompt collection. Now, I typically drive too fast on an average day, but on this day, my foot was firmly on the accelerator. I was excited with anticipation, with this warm feeling in my stomach, knowing that I was driving TO the person whom I had come to have uh… very strong feelings for over the past several months.
I felt like Frodo going to Mordor with the ring. A man (hobbit?) with a purpose. A man with intention. A man blind to fear. A man beyond excited to be in the presence of this woman at last. Fucking finally.
And you know what else? I loved feeling that feeling. I loved finally being excited about someone again. The possibilities. And that we were making this happen together.
Three hours after I left, I was on the Mass Pike and it dawned on me that I was going to pass Milford, MA, where my father is buried. I hadn’t visited his grave in a while, so the thought percolated in my head that I should stop there on my way. I went back and forth over this in my head for ten minutes. I really wanted to see her asap, and I could visit him on the way back to New York, but it was a beautiful sunny day, so I thought I should do it then. Plus I really needed to eat something because I hadn’t touched food all day. I called her and told her what I was planning and that I might be a little late. As usual, she was totally on board and understanding, and said it would give her time to relax and get ready. I hung up, planning to go visit him. Then I changed my mind again because I really wanted to get there. Then I changed it again and drove to visit my father.
I don’t eat meat — haven’t for 4 years — but there are times I make exceptions, like when I’m on the road and in a hurry and food options are limited, or when I make M. lamb chops and we share them. I pulled into a McDonald’s in Milford, ordered myself a Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese, some fries, and a water, and I headed to the cemetery. I sat down in front of his grave and immediately saw sharp, broken pieces of a yellow and blue glass bird that someone must have left on someone else’s grave before they got blown away in the wind. I picked them up carefully with a napkin (it would have been just my luck to incorporate an ER visit into this experience), and dropped them into my empty McDonald’s bag. I was so hungry by this point, I wolfed down that sandwich and fries like a barbarian. Inhaled it.
I talked to my father for a bit, happy that I was incorporating him into this special day of mine. I told him I was long overdue for something good in the romantic department. I asked him to exercise his afterlife powers (all dead people have them, of course) to make the next few days good ones for me. It was hot as hell, so I only stayed for half an hour. I kissed his gravestone goodbye and headed briefly to the grave where my grandmother, grandfather, uncle and aunt are buried together. I visited them and then was off to Boston again.
We had arranged to meet at a rooftop bar at the hotel where we were staying. I arrived around 4:30 and let her know that I had just pulled into the parking garage. I asked her if it was okay to go up to the room (a surprise meeting at a hotel room door would have been pretty anticlimactic after all of this, right?). She said yes, she was already at the bar ordering a drink.
I can’t capture in words what it was like to be *this close* to her at this moment. Within yards. Then I checked and got to the room and this feeling intensified exponentially. I saw her suitcase. Her clothes. Her perfume. Her stuff. She was here. We were in the same fucking building, within a few floors of each other. A short elevator ride. We had been in the same room. I’m telling you, it was a serious brain/heart buzz. Everyone should feel this at some point in their life. Just incredible anticipation. I’ll never forget that feeling.
And just like her, she left a few handwritten notes on blue post-it paper for me, including this one in the bathroom, accompanied by a small bottle of poo deodorizer (I eventually started calling them “Poo Drops”) and a helpful book:
Totally hilarious. Her funny notes calmed me down. They made me feel her presence and the anticipation even more deeply. I texted her that I found the notes and thought to myself “I’m texting her like normal, but she’s fucking HERE. I’m this close to her.“
I was tired from the drive and visiting my father, and that Double Quarter-Pounder and fries suddenly weren’t sitting so well, so I told her that I needed a quick rest and shower and then I’d come to where she was. All good, good. I tried to power nap but couldn’t because again, she was right there, who the fuck could sleep in this moment? Took a shower. Had to answer some work emails. By now it’s 5:30, and she was wondering where the hell I am. Joking sort of, but maybe a little concerned that she came all this way, and I wasn’t going to show. Of course that wasn’t going to happen, but I needed a few final moments to get my shit together.
Then this exchange:
Then six more minutes of me doing a final check for stray ear and eyebrow hairs and assessing all of my middle-aged physical imperfections. Wishing there was a way to transplant my 33 year-old head onto my 52 year-old body. Fuck.
Then I finally exited the hotel room and walked to the elevator thinking Holy shit this is about to happen.
Despite my anticipation and low-grade anxiety, I didn’t feel real butterflies or a roller-coaster stomach drop until I got out of the elevator and rounded the corner to the rooftop bar where I knew she was waiting for me with her back turned because, as she said “This shit is awkward as fuck.” She didn’t want to see me walking towards her in my grand approach — with a fucking mask on, no less — and she was right. She’s smart that way. She’s a great movie scripter.
Right before I entered the bar, we had this final text, the last one before we saw each other in person for the first time:
I entered the bar, and it was like jumping in a swimming pool. You just gotta do it. Don’t think. Just do. I saw her sitting at a table to the left, in a green dress with her backed turned to me. I’ll never forget seeing the back of her head. The first part of her I saw in person.
I walked toward her with my heart pounding in my chest. I got to the back of her chair, placed my hand on it, and I asked her if the seat next to her was taken. She looked up at me, smiled, and stood up. We both had sunglasses on. She said something I can’t remember, and in that second I was thinking Do I look the same to her in person? Does she like what she sees? I know I did. We hugged each other tight, something we’d wanted to do for months, touching each other for the first time. Then we kissed for the first time. Like a real one. No pecks, not a friendly how-do-ya-do-nice-to-see-you. It was real. Passionate. Cathartic.
We sat down. My head was spinning like a tornado. It felt surreal, like I was dreaming. The entire time at that rooftop bar, I couldn’t believe we were actually together, sitting in front of each other. I kept wanting to touch her hand, her arm. I felt proud that we made it happen. We did it together. During a fucking pandemic no less. I thanked her for having the courage to make the flight to Boston, a place she’d never been before. I’ve done it, so I know it’s not easy. I apologized for the long wait for me at the table.
I needed a drink. Three, even. She was ahead of me. Totally chill.
We talked, and it was just like it normally was. The transition was seamless. It was better, actually. A thousand times better. I touched her arm, felt her skin, held her hand, looked into her eyes. It was like going from a snowy television channel on one of those old Zenith televisions to 4K television on the newest Samsung. Everything was sharp, intensified, in hypercolor. She smelled fantastic. Her smile was amazing, and now it was right in front of me. Her eyes were hazel, something I hadn’t been close enough to see before. Her Louisiana voice was in my ears with no technology interfering.
We took a selfie to capture the moment. We sent it to her friends (including J., who made this happen), and to E.’s sister and to my two sisters. We stayed there for a long time drinking, eating, and talking. A full moon rose in the distance. Was this really happening?
It was surreal. Beautiful. I don’t mean to sound like a self-pitying sad sack, but this type of thing doesn’t usually go this well for me. To the contrary, it usually goes sideways. Ass over tea kettle. Usually there’s a catch I don’t see coming until it’s too late. Or my feelings aren’t totally there. Not this time. This time it was all there, and this added to the surreality of the moment for me.
Eventually we left the bar and went back to the room.
[YADDA YADDA YADDA]
The next morning, at precisely 8:54 a.m., I woke up to a text buzzing on my cell phone. It was E.’s lifelong friend and soulmate E.2 cheerfully (but no, seriously) inquiring about E’s well-being. (I had forgotten that E. gave my number to E.2 and E.’s sister because hey, you never know.) I was surprised because I thought that E. was keeping them updated in real time. Apparently not. So I told E. that uh… she’d better let her people know that she was okay before they came for my ass with torches and pitchforks. I responded to E.2 that E’s proof of life would be arriving shortly, and I apologized for all of them getting worried. Fortunately, E. helped me avoid prosecution with a quick text.
Sidenote: I totally get E.2’s concern, of course. If anyone I cared about was going to meet a total stranger across the country, I would be beyond nervous and would want updates oh, every 10 minutes or so. Not hearing from them all night would have pissed me off and gotten me very upset. That said, it’s funny to contemplate what kind of idiot would even consider doing something nefarious in this situation. I guess there are potential scenarios, but they had my phone number, picture, blog, full name, and could find out where I worked and a bunch of other shit with a simple Google search. There are security cameras all over the hotel, all over Boston. DNA and fingerprints in the room. I’m not a sociopath, obviously, but this would have been the fastest solved criminal case in human history.
We spent five amazing days together in Boston and Portsmouth. In Boston, we explored the city on foot in a way I’d never done before. The next day we walked (an interminable) 5 miles, over a bridge into Cambridge, then back over another bridge, to Fenway Park, which would normally be packed with people on a midsummer’s day, but was a ghost town due to COVID. We went to the same souvenir store where my father bought me a Yaz shirt during my first visit to Fenway when I was seven years-old, and I bought M. a Red Sox pink unicorn. From there, we walked back to the hotel, just as the wind started to pick up from hurricane Isaias, which was approaching the city from the south.
Man, E. is in damn good shape. I like to walk around cities. It’s my preferred means of exploring and getting around. She’s the same way. So over our two days in Boston we walked. And walked. And walked. She broke me like a rented mule. We walked to the Boston Common. We walked to Faneuil Hall. We walked to the North End. We walked to Fenway. And back. I think I’m in decent shape for my age. I’ve exercised, lifted weights, and run most of my life. But damn did I feel all of my 52 years during those walks, most notably, a persistent twinge in my right MCL that said “Hey, love your moxie, love how you’re trying to keep up with someone nine years younger than you, but you’re wearing the wrong shoes, and I’m reaching maximum tension down here. Try a fucking taxi before I really lose my patience.” It was painful but hilarious. I loved the fact that I had to try to keep up with her instead of the other way around.
After a long walk towards Old North Church on our last day in Boston, we stopped (mercifully) at a small restaurant in the North End, where we had drinks and lunch, in that order. Maybe it was because I was with her, maybe it was because it was my first real furlough outside after months of COVID quarantining, and I was feeling happy and comfortable, maybe it was the beers, but I just started unloading my most intimate and painful stories of loss to her: losing my father, losing my favorite uncle, losing my best childhood friend Anne so young. It all came out, and of course they brought tears. I was embarrassed because I hadn’t expected to be talking about those things or letting loose emotionally in that way, but she listened with empathy and care and held my hand. It was just another moment where I grew closer to her, which further cemented my feelings.
There were many moments like this over our five days together, but there’s one final one that I want to highlight.
On our first night in Portsmouth, after I’d shown her the house in the small town where I grew up, and we’d driven up the Atlantic coast on Route 1A, we had dinner and walked to Prescott Park with a bottle of champagne that I brought from New York, and two paper coffee cups we took from the hotel. It was dark, and I had pretty much stopped limping by then.
We sat down on a raised park bench from which we could see, across the bay, the Kittery Shipyard in Maine where my father worked for 44 years. Behind us, a young female hipster played an acoustic guitar and sang softly to a small audience of three. We poured champagne into our cups. After a few sips, we saw a full moon rise in the east, big and yellow. It felt like it was there just for us, for our night, for our moment together.
The combination of finally being with her, showing her my hometown, drinking champagne, the full moon, the music, the soft summer breeze, and the view of the shipyard, a place my father loved so much and was so proud of…. All I can say is that this was one of the most romantic nights of my life. I wish I could have captured that moment, bottled it up, and taken it with me for whenever I need it, or want to re-experience those emotions, that moment in time, that night with her. (Like now.) It was beautiful. Surreal again. Like a dream. That’s all I can say.
There is more, of course. But I’m not here to catalog everything. Some of it is private, and I’m sure some things have escaped my immediate memory as I type this stream of consciousness entry of mine.
Leaving her, dropping her off at Logan Airport on August 7th, waving goodbye before she entered the airport, was a major come down. Fucking major. Painful. Then the interminable drive back to New York alone. Physically separated again. Back where we were before. Nothing immediate to look forward to. Did those 5 days really happen?
The hard part of having something exceed my expectations so spectacularly, of feeling so fucking much for this person in only 5 days, of having 5 months of communication and emotional build-up get released and realized in such a positive way is that I now have to face reality, geographic, emotional, and otherwise. It was one thing to backseat that shit in anticipation of meeting her because things were still somewhat hedged or unknown before we met in person. But now? Now it’s real for me. I want this person. I want her around me all the time. I want to be with her all the time. I want to sleep with her every night. I want to cook together. Bike together. Travel together. Have our kids know each other. And I can’t have those things. Not soon anyway. Maybe not until I’m (gag!) 63 years old. That’s fucked up to think about. I don’t want to think about it. There has to be another way around that.
Some would say that it’s too soon for me to feel this way after only five days. That I’m delusional. Blind. An idiot. That she may not even be the type of person who can be pinned down in one place for too long.
I don’t have a crystal ball to tell the future to tell them if they’re right or wrong. But I know myself. I’ll be 52 in two days. I’ve had my share of relationships, attractions, infatuations, good dates, bad dates, and breakups. I’ve been married and divorced. I know myself. I know my feelings. If she was here, in my town, I’d be ready to do this full-time and exclusively.
But she’s not here and will not be soon, if ever. That’s the reality. Her divorce also isn’t done. She’s still processing major emotions, her new status and evolving single identity after two decades of being with one person. She’s entitled to explore all of that and find her way to where she wants to be without me injecting myself into that process. I’ve done it myself, so I know what that’s like, and it has to be even more intense and bumpy for her given how long she was married and how old she was when she started that relationship.
So, for a change I got what I wanted in the romantic department. But I also didn’t get what I wanted. Yet. Is there a “yet”? I don’t know. Am I being foolish here, prematurely trying to build a mansion on sand? I don’t know. What I do know is that there are more chapters to be written here, and I’m not the sole author. Navigating what I want and need and what she wants and needs during this process while we’re this far apart will be challenging to say the least. What I fall back on is our honesty and acceptance of each other without judgment. It remains to be seen if the separated caterpillar will still want this when she becomes a divorced butterfly (or an older separated caterpillar with a new identity).
Also, if I’m being honest, somewhere on my list of priorities is avoiding getting emotionally punched in the face by this if at all possible. In that regard, there’s this concept in the law called “assumption of the risk” that applies to this situation. When you freely undertake a dangerous activity, like riding a roller-coaster or sky-diving or bungee jumping, if a defendant can show that you did so voluntarily and knowingly, they can assert assumption of the risk as a defense to any recovery you may seek if you get hurt while engaging in that activity.
In other words, if you want the thrill of the roller-coaster ride, you can’t sue the amusement park if you whack your head on the seat in front of you and get a concussion during the first drop:
You own that shit, my brother.
I own that shit. I’m assuming the risk here. Accordingly, I hereby concede that this written waiver can be used against me in any future heartbreak litigation.
I’m nothing if not fair.
