How it all began one day

How did we meet? This is the more interesting version: I was driving my father to church (at 63 he finally gave in to my mother's religion and agreed to to attend RCIA classes and be baptized into Catholicism, he who spent almost all his life a devoted Buddhist, but I guess towards the end, when he has slowly realized that Buddhism doesn't offer him a definitive place to go in death, decided he needed more certainty in the answer to the after-life), and at 6 o'clock pm on a blistering Chicago winter evening, when the winds were blowing below zero with my father, small and crumbly in his winter jacket, I realized I had locked the keys in the car. So I borrowed money for the cab. I stopped by church one evening to return the money, and the guy that lent it to me were playing volleyball with a few others. They were all clean, up-right (ous) members of the church's youth group--all except for one.

I had been home for only half a year and had spent all that time at home, taking care of my father, whose diabetes was beginning to wreak havoc in his already frail body. I haven't made any friends and was craving the company of others my age, so I stayed to watch them play. Put off as I was by the nice-young-men of the church (because I know in truth they're not so nice, in fact can be mean and stupid, and even though they try their best to look nice and think they do, they're quite ugly and awkward) I greatly enjoyed watching them play. Some of them had their shirts off, their bodies glowing bronze sweat. Maybe it was because I hadn't had sex for over a year, maybe it was the pheromones escaping from their brown bodies, or their cave-men grunt each time they spike the ball, I was intoxicated. I felt so exhilarated, so moved I almost cried. And out of all of them, his body glowed bronze the most, was the brownest, and he did not grunt, because sexy as their victory grunts were, his non-grunting was sexier. For some reason, he stood out like a thorn. Maybe because he was taller than all the guys there, even though he walks with a little stoop. And he laughed a little louder too, seemed a little messier than the rest. He wore a cap that shadowed his eyes but I could feel them looking at me, and I could look straight into them even though I couldn't see them, and that was sexiest of all.

So, after the game, I asked him out to dinner even though it was after ten. When we were ready to go home, I was drunk and so was he. But I wasn't so drunk that I couldn't drive, but I pretended to be anyway and made him drive me home. I didn't care about my car; that can be worked out later, I wasn't ready to end the night, even though it was after four. He did take me home that night (I didn't want to) and we abided by the first date rule--no sex on the first date. Nor did we have sex on the second date. But by the third date I was done with rules. Sitting in an empty park in the middle of downtown Chicago, I asked him if he wanted to go to a hotel (there was nowhere else we could go because we were both living at home with parents). I think he was caught off guard a bit, perhaps surprised that I took the initiative to voice what we were both thinking. And that was that.