Another Origin Story

This post is basically the next chapter of the story that I told in what became my first post on this blog (whose title, appropriately, starts with the words “Of Beginnings”). In that post, I made reference to the many possible “beginnings” that I could have written about with regard to Jen and me, but then zeroed in on the one specific story that I wanted to tell—which was really a kind of pre-origin story for our relationship, the events of which predated our actually meeting or getting to know each other. This time, I want to tell the story of our actual first meeting(s)…and most particularly, of what I have always remembered about our very first conversation.

I have, perhaps, less of a compelling reason for wanting to tell this story, at this particular time, than I had when I wrote the previous one. At the start of that one, I set my urge to write about the beginnings of Jen’s and my relationship in the context of where I was at in trying to process and adjust to our divorce. That was over three years ago (long predating the existence of this blog, whose inaugural post it eventually became), at a time when I was only just starting to recover a semblance of equilibrium after a year-plus of emotional turmoil, struggle, and despair. (I don’t think I had made this connection until just this moment, but about four months later, in what looks in hindsight like another expression of the same fixation on our “beginnings” that prompted me to write that story, I stopped in Morris on the first leg of my trip to the Grand Canyon, and visited the park where Jen and I got married—on, of all dates, the 23rd anniversary of our actual wedding day. I wrote about that experience here.) I’m in a fairly different place now, and I find myself ruminating on Jen and our relationship much less these days than previously. So, why write another story about our “beginnings” now? I could cite various reasons, I suppose. I mean, for starters, ruminating “less” doesn’t mean not ruminating at all; memories like these still sometimes occupy my thoughts just “because.” Also, the story of how Jen and I initially connected is something that I have frequently thought about as a contrast to my mostly frustrating and discouraging efforts at dating, post-divorce, and could easily be made into a vehicle for venting about how very difficult and unsatisfying and fraught and even, in some ways, misguided the whole enterprise of “dating” feels to me. No doubt I will, in fact, have some things to say about that in the course of this post. Still, it’s not like I’ve been doing much in the way of trying to date recently, so that rationale still doesn’t really address the “why now” question. Honestly, I’m not sure that there really is much of an answer to that question, beyond simply “because I’m in the mood to write something.” The desire to eventually write this “next chapter” has been kicking around in my head, off and on, ever since I wrote the previous story, and now is when I happen to have gotten around to it. And that’s reason enough.

I tried to describe the general context of my life at the time when Jen and I met at the start of the previous story, so I won’t recap that information in detail here. But in broad outline: It was the fall of our freshman year of college, at the University of Minnesota Morris; I was in an ambiguous relationship status with a previous girlfriend, who had broken up with me a couple weeks ago but with whom my relationship had subsequently sort of resumed; due to the events of the previous story, I knew of the existence of this person named Jen, who sounded like someone I would like to know; and she, entirely independently, was at least dimly aware of my existence, via a separate friend-of-a-friend connection. In fact, just days before the events that I’m about to relate, she had been “dragged along” (that was how she would later describe it) by her friend Becca to my dorm room, on the evening of Sunday, November 1st (1992), to meet my best friend/roommate (then named Dan) and myself…but as fate would have it, I wasn’t there at the time, so a first-meeting-that-could-have-been had failed to materialize (but I don’t think I was at all aware of this until later).

Through some combination of the arbitrary whims of fate and the fact that we all, in my immediate social circle, frequented the weekly social gatherings hosted by Professor W. in his home in these first months of our college experience, Thursdays loom large in the story of how Jen and I came to know each other. My previous story focused on my first becoming aware of Jen’s existence via events that took place on Thursday, October 22nd, and the event that forms the heart of this current story took place exactly two weeks later, on Thursday, November 5th. Technically, however, our actual first meeting probably happened earlier that week. It was not really significant or memorable in any way, and I’m extremely sketchy on the details at this point, but it definitely took place sometime between that “missed encounter” on Sunday evening and the actually important one that would occur on Thursday. The setting was the food service (cafeteria) building on campus, during either a lunch or a dinner sometime during that first week of November. The way I remember it, I was already sitting at a table and eating with one or more friends and/or acquaintances when another small cluster of people, some of whom we knew, approached our table and joined us. I’ve always remembered Jenny, my still-sort-of-girlfriend, being one of them, and imagined that she sort of had Jen “in tow” as a new acquaintance whom she was introducing to others in her circle (like me)…but I actually have to question that memory a bit. For one thing, I have no memory or basis for believing that Jenny and Jen ever actually hung out or became acquainted beyond the level of classmates, even though it was Jenny’s reaction to Jen on a previous occasion (and subsequent relating of it to me) that had first put Jen on my own radar as a potential friend (see previous story). Also, given that Becca—who definitely had become friends with Jen by this point—had been determined to introduce her to Dan (Larkin) and me just a few days before this, the role that my memory has assigned to Jenny arguably makes much more sense if it was actually played by Becca. But however that may be, what I (dimly) recall is that a small group of friends/acquaintances of mine joined me and others at a table, and Jen was with them, and introductions were made. Since I had been interested in making the acquaintance of this interesting-sounding person whom Jenny had told me about, I was pleased to now be meeting her. Alas, though, this initial encounter amounted to nothing beyond simply being introduced. Jen, I think, said very little, very much as one would expect for someone who was not only very shy, but also being introduced to a bunch of strangers-to-her who all knew each other, in a noisy public space filled with comings and goings, and likely with no particular agenda to get to know or make an impression on me or anyone else present. Also, I have the sense that I may have already been nearly finished eating by the time they joined us, and perhaps even left before long to head off to a class or who-knows-what (though that’s mostly just speculation). In any event, nothing immediately came of our being introduced; honestly, the event was so insignificant that it’s a little surprising, looking back, that we even recognized each other the next time we met.

That “next time,” it turned out, transpired at Professor W.’s house on the Thursday evening of the same week. Alas, I remember virtually nothing about the specific scenario that led to the two of us conversing that evening. My memory of the event begins with the two of us sitting next to each other on the floor, in the living room, ostensibly part of a larger circle of people gathered there, yet (I think) both slightly physically withdrawn from the people to either side of us. Was it pure chance that the two of us ended up adjacent to each other? Or, had I deliberately sat down next to her, since she was someone whom I was interested in getting to know? Or was it more a matter of ending up in proximity to each other through being accompanied by one or another of our mutual friends/acquaintances? Did we even recognize each other on our own, or were we re-introduced? To the extent that she had any sense of who I was, was I essentially Becca’s friend/Dan’s roommate, or Jenny’s friend, or just someone whom she had been introduced to in Food Service the other day? I have nothing in the way of answers to these questions. All I do have—and even this is a memory that I don’t entirely trust—is a vague sense that our physical position, somewhat back and apart from the rest of the people sitting there in a circle on the living room floor, reflected a shared emotional separation from the generally lively social interactions dominating the room, and that this, more than anything, perhaps accounts for our falling into conversation with each other, despite being virtual strangers. Being slightly withdrawn from the general hubbub like this was probably the norm for Jen at these events, so her side of this doesn’t feel like it requires any explanation. As for me, I may conceivably have made a conscious choice to initiate a one-on-one conversation rather than partaking in whatever larger discussion was happening around us, or it may have been something else (or a mixture of factors, of course). I do think that, in the weeks since Jenny had initially broken up with me, I had been feeling a bit low-key, and more inclined toward quiet personal conversation than lively social interactions in large groups, much of the time, and that this remained the case even after we had resumed acting as though we were not “broken up.” Separately from this, too, I recall a general sense of losing some of my initial enthusiasm for engaging with the crowd at Professor W.’s gatherings as that first quarter of my college experience progressed—partly, I think, as part of a larger reaction (a petty one, I might add, which reflects rather poorly on the me of this period) to discovering, upon entering a larger, and more diverse and thoughtful and broad-minded, social world in the transition from high school to college, that I was rather less special and smart and unique than I had thought I was. But I digress! The point is, whatever the immediate social and/or emotional antecedents, it transpired that this Jen person and I started chatting with each other, there on the floor of Professor W.’s living room on this Thursday evening in early November.

It can’t have been the only, or even the first, thing that we talked about, but the memorable part of the conversation—the bit that would lodge itself indelibly in my brain, and that I still remember vividly almost thirty years later—began when Jen made a remark about her outfit. I could be wrong, but I want to say that she was wearing a sort of magenta sweater that was perhaps a couple sizes large on her but that was a particular favorite of hers at the time. This, anyway, is certainly how I picture the scene in my head. And it was specifically the oversized character of what she was wearing that, for whatever reason, she commented on, by mentioning that she tended in general to favor somewhat large, “baggy” clothing, and adding that her mother had on occasion expressed concern over this, thinking that it was a sign that she had low self-esteem. That didn’t immediately register as making any sense to me, so—with zero forethought or pause for reflection of any kind—I blurted out my immediate, genuine reaction, which was: “Really!? I would have thought it meant the exact opposite of that.” To which, with considerable appreciation and enthusiasm, Jen replied “That’s what I always tell her!” And in this simple moment of bonding over a shared intuition whose details were immediately mutually understood and required no elaboration, something “magical” happened: a moment of mutual recognition. We couldn’t have been conversing for more than a few minutes; we were, by any reasonable definition, still near-strangers; but I knew, in that moment, “here is a person like me,” and it was clear that she felt the same thing. It was that feeling of suddenly seeing, in someone’s eyes, the entire, real, human, thoughtful, vulnerable, relatable person behind them, and feeling that you know that person. Obviously, our conversation will have continued beyond this point—and almost certainly, despite what I just said about it not needing to be elaborated, we must have talked explicitly about what we both meant: that in choosing to wear “baggy” clothing, Jen was not trying to hide a body that she was insecure about, but rather showing that her self-esteem didn’t depend upon other people’s reactions to her physical appearance. But it doesn’t really matter (nor does it matter whether or not this shared assessment of ours was even accurate!), which is doubtless why I don’t remember any of what passed between us beyond this moment. For all intents and purposes, we became friends in that instant of mutual recognition.

I would not like to be misunderstood here. I am certainly not, for instance, trying to imply anything like “love at first sight.” The experience that I’m trying to describe was not specifically romantic, for one thing; in fact, the one other time in my life when I can remember a similar feeling was during the conversation, four years earlier, when a 14-year-old me first met the person who would become my lifelong best (male) friend, Dan/Larkin. Also, and importantly, I did not remotely come away from this conversation with Jen thinking of her as a romantic prospect. The fact that I was chatting with my future wife was certainly not among the things that I felt I “knew” in that moment of recognition between us. In retrospect, there’s actually something sort of remarkable about how completely true this is. I mean, I had just met someone whom I would find myself falling for just a few months down the road, and our initial conversation had explicitly touched on the subject of her body image and how she liked to dress…yet my first memories of “noticing” her physically come only later. I literally remember (or least think I remember) how she was dressed on this evening (because it was relevant to our conversation, and also just because that sweater was so characteristic for her at the time), but nothing about any particular impression that she made on me aesthetically, positive or negative. I’m belaboring this point for several reasons: First, just to dispel any suspicion (as I said at the start of this paragraph) that I’m over-romanticizing our first meeting, or any idea that we, like, gazed into each others’ eyes and immediately fell in love, or whatever. Second, I suppose, to sort of preserve the…for lack of a better word, “purity,” of the memory—or, putting it more bluntly, to make it clear that our moment of connection wasn’t significant and memorable to me merely (or really, even partly) because I was a horny almost-19-year-old meeting a girl with whom I thought I might get lucky. But even more importantly, I emphasize this because of the dramatic contrast that it reflects between my experience of meeting Jen at (almost) 19 on the one hand, and my experiences trying to date in my 40s on the other.

“Dating,” in the sense that I’m using the word here, is something that I never actually did until after my divorce. I’m talking about the absurd social ritual in which two virtual strangers identify each other as possible romantic prospects, and make plans to meet each other in a public place (typically an eatery of some sort), where they then pass some indeterminate amount of time making conversation with each other and sort of “trying each other on” (under the most forced and artificial circumstances imaginable) as potential intimate companions and/or life partners, even though as of yet they can’t even plausibly call each other friends. You show up (maybe to a venue that you’ve never been to before and is therefore at least a little disorienting in itself; maybe to a more familiar a place that you yourself suggested, but are worried she may dislike or be judging in some way), clear the hurdle of recognizing your date based on your memory of a few pictures you saw on her dating profile, sit down together, and maybe order food (even though it’s super-awkward to spend your first five minutes together staring at a menu). And then you start talking, and you do your best to engage in a meaningful way with this stranger about whom you, as yet, have no clue how you even feel. You want to make a good impression, of course, but obviously you also want to be authentic—”be yourself.” But in this artificial and wildly unfamiliar context, you don’t even feel very clear as to what “being yourself” entails, even if normally you’re someone (as I am) who feels he “knows himself” pretty well. And if even I am not sure of this, then how can she be expected to glean any sense of who I actually am? Just what impressions is she forming of me, anyway? Also, how much do I even care what she thinks of me? I mean, I haven’t yet figured out what I think of her, so… Hmm. Can I see any kind of future for myself with this person? Actually, forget that; how about just, do I think I might want to see this person again after tonight? Or, if that much, at least, is easy… Can I imagine a physical relationship with this person? Could she be attracted to me? Am I attracted to her? What assumptions or expectations is she operating under with respect to this side of things, I wonder? Even if I were clear about my own feelings, to what extent would it be good for me to give her any indication of them? Is she as uncertain about all of this as I am right now, or is this easy for her? If the latter, is it easy because she’s already decided she’s not interested, or (even worse!) is she actually feeling like we’re really clicking and things are great, and it’s only me who is confused and unsure? Also, can I somehow keep this flood of internal questions and anxieties in check enough to remain focused on whatever conversation we’re having?

No version of the process of traversing the series of social and emotional barriers on the path from being strangers to romantic partners is without its stresses and anxieties; still, it should go without saying that none of the crap that I just spewed out in the paragraph above was clogging my brain on that Thursday evening in November of 1992 when I first interacted with Jen. Part of the reason, of course, was that our conversation was unplanned, and took place in the context of an ordinary social situation as opposed to a “date.” Just as important, I was in no sense “looking” at the time, so there was no automatic impulse to wonder whether or not this new female acquaintance might be a “prospect.” As a result, our embryonic relationship was free to develop organically, into whatever it had the potential to become (even if that had been nothing!), at its own pace, unburdened by the weight of charged expectations or anxious over-scrutiny or arbitrary dating rules. I can’t, for example, say when it was that I did first start “noticing” Jen physically (that is, when I became conscious of being attracted to her), because I wasn’t constantly interrogating myself from the day we met as to whether or not I felt any attraction. I can only say that, over the next couple of months, such feelings very much did materialize for me (taking me by surprise a little, even, as they did so!). And I just can’t help but to feel—however wildly impractical this point of view may be for a divorced forty-something adult who would really like to meet someone, and fall in love again, at some point—that this model, not the “dating” model, represents the only remotely sane or plausible way for a new romantic relationship to develop. I understand, of course, that there is virtually no chance of this actually happening. I was able to luck into Jen as a freshman in college because the social world that one inhabits at that age is structured in such a way as to make this sort of thing possible. The same is not the case in the world that I inhabit now. The hard truth is that, for the most part, people my age do the “dating” thing not because they think it’s super-fun (though some people, incomprehensibly, actually do seem to enjoy it), or even that it’s particularly likely to succeed, but because there just aren’t really any other options. I know this. But still, the whole procedure just seems nuts to me.

To return to my actual story, though: Three months would pass, after our initial conversation at Professor W.’s house that night, before Jen and I would become “a couple,” but it didn’t even take a full week for us to become full-on friends. I know this, even though I don’t even remember the end of that first conversation—much less when we saw each other next, or anything about how that came to happen. I know because it so happened that the following Thursday, the 12th, was my 19th birthday…and what I vividly do remember is Jen and Becca showing up at my dorm room at some point on that day, bearing birthday gifts for me. On the whole, I remember this birthday as a bit of a letdown. It passed with relatively little fanfare or celebration, and I received very few bona fide gifts. (Probably a card and a check from my parents, which—don’t get me wrong—I appreciated, but which didn’t feel the same as opening an actual present, in the presence of the giver. But, such was the price of being a newly independent college student, I supposed.) The still-sort-of-girlfriend, too, would kind of disappoint me. She also gave me a card, but it was such a generic and impersonal one (a stark contrast to her custom during our better times) that she felt compelled to apologize for it—the said apology taking the place of any personal message that I might have hoped to find inside the card. Later, we would go out for a birthday dinner together, but even then I recall feeling like I somehow didn’t have her full attention. Mainly, I think, I had hoped to take advantage of the dinner as a chance to finally have the much-needed conversation about our relationship status (after having broken up, then subsequently resumed acting as though we were a couple) that she had been putting off for almost two weeks at this point (a red flag if ever there was one!), but she made it clear right away that she wasn’t willing to talk about it yet. The gifts from Jen and Becca must have come earlier in the day, before this dinner…but still, the point I’m making here is that they were easily the highlight of my entire birthday.

The gifts—which were, in fact, the only honest-to-god birthday presents that I received from anyone that year—were presented as being from Jen and Becca (one item from each of them), but it could not have been more obvious that the whole thing had been Jen’s idea. And the contrast with the meaningless card from Jenny was particularly sharp, because Jen (who, remember, had known me for all of seven days at this point!) managed to come up with a gift (at Pamida, no less—the one and only place to shop in Morris for just about anything, at the time) that was imbued with personal meaning, in connection with the particulars of our fledgling friendship. Thanks to the timing of my birthday in relation to our meeting, I know for sure (even though I can’t remember the details) that before we had even known each other for a week, we had already started hanging out and playing cribbage together—the activity that would remain “our thing” in the months to come, repeatedly keeping us awake and having fun together until all hours of the night. The activity through which we would get to know one another, and gradually develop deeper feelings for each other. I know this, because the birthday present that Jen gave me was a cribbage board, while “from” Becca (but obviously picked out by Jen) came a couple of decks of cards to accompany it. The items were simple and inexpensive, but they had an outsized emotional impact on me. I had not expected gifts from these very new friends at all, yet they (but mainly Jen), alone among all the people in my life, had turned up and made me feel cared for on my birthday! I was distinctly charmed by the gesture.

Looking back now, and imagining what had clearly happened behind the scenes, I’m also struck by something else: Back on the 1st, Becca had “dragged” Jen, half-unwilling, to our dorm room to meet these two friends of hers, Dan (Larkin) and Dave (though of course, I ended up not being present). Now, not even two weeks later, Jen had clearly been the one to “drag” Becca out to shop for birthday gifts for one of those friends (not at all unwillingly in this case, but still very much in an “along for the ride” sort of capacity—even to the point of deferring to Jen in the matter of what to get for me)! The turtle had come out of her shell pretty quickly, following our simple-yet-remarkable moment of initial connection. However Jen might have reframed these events in her own mind, years later, they represented the start of something wonderful.