How We Met

I've been working on this on and off for several weeks now. It's the story of the night I met Penn. I meant to have it posted by our "official" one-year anniversary (May 3rd), but obviously that didn't happen. And now it has turned into this monster document that I can't possibly post in one entry because it just wouldn't be readable. As it is, it's probably interesting only to me, but it's also something I didn't really document anywhere at the time. I didn't even write about it in great detail in my personal, not-for-the-internet journal, mainly because I didn't realize at the time that Penn was going to become such a huge part of my life. But now I know that it's a night I would like to remember, and it's about time I finally wrote about it somewhere. So here is Part I:

At this time a year ago I was first getting to know Penn. I was looking through my blog the other day and I realized that as far as this record is concerned I just sort of skimmed over the whole first six weeks or so that we were dating. After years of being single or more-or-less single and in relationships that were fun for the moment but without a future, I knew within the first few days of talking to Penn that things had the potential to be different. Things had the potential to be really, really good, and I was afraid if I talked too much about it or expressed how excited I actually was I would jinx it.

But now we’ve just passed the one-year anniversary of the day he officially asked me to be his girlfriend, and we’ve been living together for almost six months and we haven’t even come close to killing each other yet, so I feel like I can safely tell the story of how we met.

It was Friday night, the last weekend of March. My aunt from California was in town for a business trip, so I had driven up to City B to hang out with my aunt and my cousin Rae since this particular aunt is also Rae’s aunt. My aunt had also invited her “friend and business associate” Dan to hang out with us that night. Dan ended up being a fifty-something NASA scientist who was clearly married and also very clearly into my aunt (incidentally, my aunt—who has been divorced from my cousins’ father for as long as I can remember—is known in our family for her ongoing string of bizarre and/or inappropriate boyfriends, so Rae and I were having a lot of fun cracking jokes about Dan the Supposed Friend and Business Associate whenever they were both out of earshot).

The week prior to this I had been to my college roommate’s wedding in my home state and then out to Las Vegas for my brother’s 21^st birthday party, so I was still in recovery mode from the trip and not really in the going out or flirting mood. I was tired and, to be honest, if my aunt hadn’t been in town and we hadn’t already had the plans in place for several weeks, I wouldn’t have gone out at all that night. I mention this only because a) it proves the old adage that you always meet someone great when you’re least expecting it and b) it explains why I was not really dressed for a night on the town at all. I was wearing a cardigan, people. A GREY cardigan. How much more dull and non-descript can you get? Oh, and I was wearing the pearl necklace that my roommate had just given me as a bridesmaid’s gift at her wedding because it was brand new and I had been wearing it pretty much nonstop that week. Penn says I looked like a librarian. (And yet for some reason he approached me and wanted to talk to me anyway! But we’re getting there…)

Anyway, my aunt, her Friend and Business Associate Dan, Rae and I went out for crabcakes and then decided to head to a bar where a semi-well-known local band was playing. I don’t remember the name of the band, but I do remember the name of the bar. In fact, for some reason I kept a matchbook from the bar and took it home. I found it when I moved into my current apartment seven months later. I don’t normally collect matchbooks and I have no conscious memory of deciding to take the matches home. Now I wonder if I subconsciously knew at the time that I would want to remember the night. Rae and I picked that particular bar solely because we thought my aunt would like the band. And when we got to the bar I knew we’d made the right choice. The bar was a dark hole-in-the-wall place. I haven’t been back since that night so my memory may be faulty, but in my head everything is dark wood and the lighting is dim and sort of greenish from neon signs and the walls are absolutely covered with signs and stickers and license plates and police patches and the usual hole-in-the-wall bar nonsense. You’ve been to a bar exactly like this one, I guarantee it. Every drinker in America has been to some version of this bar at least once. Practically everyone in the bar was over the age of 40. The band was made up of a bunch of middle aged jazz guys. My aunt was satisfied and, since Friend and Business Associate Dan had headed home, she immediately befriended an ancient-looking hippie and spent the rest of the night talking to him. Rae and I grabbed seats at the bar. I ordered a vodka tonic. I drank it slowly. I listened to the music. The music was decent, but I was bored. It wasn’t even 11:00 yet, though, so it felt too early on a Friday night to call it quits.

I don’t remember when I first saw Penn. Thinking back on it, I recall noticing him up against the wall across the room from where I was sitting, but I didn’t really notice him, you know? I noted his presence, but in the same way I was noting everyone in the bar: old dancing couple, guy who looks like he has been a smoker for sixty years, kid who is way too young to legally be in this bar, balding guy with nerdy glasses, attractive guy by the back wall. I have no idea how long he was in the bar before he decided to talk to me.

It gives me the chills now when I think how close I came to never meeting Penn at all. I was getting more and more bored by the minute and I was getting tired AND everyone I was with had left me to save our seats at the bar while they went out to the patio to smoke. I was on my second vodka tonic at that point so I made a deal with myself: as soon as I finished the drink, I would say my goodbyes and head home. I was two sips from finishing the drink when Penn walked up beside me and said, “Hey, I have a random question. Can you name the five oceans? My friends and I are trying to figure it out and we can’t name all of them.”

To be continued...