jimmy quit, joey got married
We’d probably known each other for about a year when we started flirting. I think it was July – Lallapalooza 1993. He was there with a casual girlfriend and I was enjoying the freedom of knowing that I’d be fleeing town in a few weeks, leaving for a college education. It was a hot, hot day and the drinking water had somehow become contaminated. He was old enough to buy beer, and ironically, beer was the same price as the bottled water they were trying to sell. So, we drank beer to quench our thirst.
I remember sitting in the shady woods, drinking beers and batting my eyelashes. Somehow, we talked each other into festival ear piercing in an ez-up tent. I made him hold my hand while I was getting punctured with a blunt object through my flesh. Not that I really thought it would hurt that badly (I’d had this done a few times already), but it was a good excuse for physical contact (I’m only 18 remember).
I never saw him that night after I’d worked my way through the mosh pit during the headline concert (Primus – w00t) and landed a spot on the barrier gate at the foot of the stage. Apparently, the girlfriend had managed an injury, and consequently, he spent most of the Primus concert in first aid with a bitter and pissed off girlfriend.
A few weeks after the concert, the girlfriend was an ex and we were hanging out. In early August, we went to see The Mighty Mighty Boss Tones at Harpo’s – a small shady bar in a shady part of town. We had sex in the bed of his pickup truck after the concert. After that, it was 3 steamy weeks of fun before I left for college.
He came to see me off, in the early morning, the day I left. He said he wanted to marry me someday. I told him I was flattered, but that he shouldn’t wait for me. I wasn’t planning on coming back.
Even though we were going to try and give the ‘long distance relationship’ thing a bit of a go, my heart just wasn’t in it from the start. As soon as I got to my dorm and started meeting new people, I knew I wanted to separate myself from the past I’d made downstate. I’d promised him that I wouldn’t end our relationship until we could see each other in person. I wouldn’t do it over the phone or in a letter, I’d give him that much. Well, within 3 weeks of starting my new life, I was drafting a “dear soon-to-be-ex-boyfriend” letter. I’d found someone else and was moving on.
We talked briefly when I came home for Thanksgiving. We saw each other again that following summer – my first summer home from college. I was still dating the distraction that caused me to break things off. This new boy, he and I had a good thing. But, the old boy and I were going to be friends. Since we were still friends, I figured there was no harm in asking him to buy me some beer to take back to school with me. Heh. What a dork I was 
The night he bought me a case of MGD was the last time I talked to him until after I graduated and moved back home.
That new boy? He and I lasted 3 years. I held on tight to him until I realized one day that I really just couldn’t stand him. I couldn’t stand him or his family and I needed to be done. A year or so later, my friendship with the Italian Stallion became much more. We dated during my last semester in college and when I graduated that December, we kept it going when I moved back downstate to find a job. He decided he was done with me when I took my first full-time professional job in Lansing. He figured I’d never move back up to the UP and he knew he sure wouldn’t move downstate – not even for me.
So, since I was lonely and starting to get depressed, I decided to get in touch with an old friend. This old friend put me in touch with some other old friends. This old friend also introduced me to ICQ and sent me some contacts. Sure enough, that boy that I’d left standing in my street 5 years earlier was one of those contacts.
Being completely unfamiliar with Instant Messaging, and only mildly familiar with email (this was only 1998), I sent (in hindsight) a very strange IM to that old boyfriend of mine. He hadn’t heard from me in almost 4 years, and one day he gets an IM that said nothing more than “Hey Loser … ”
We’ve been married for almost 7 years now. Funny how these things work out, isn’t it?
