Vol. 90: Moral of the story: Shoot your shot

Beyoncé’s II Hands II Heaven is one of her best songs - the vocals, the production, the lyrics. It is sexy and emotional and beautiful. I sing along, offkey: “Baby, I’ve been waiting, my whole life.. for you and I.”

Beyoncé met her man when she was ahem questionably young, and in my case, the lyrics make me laugh because we met at 22/21 years old and started dating at 23/22. I also sing along with Snoh Aalegra: “I’ve been waiting my whole life, to find someone like you, find someone like you.”

“My whole life?” I was SO YOUNG.

Today’s our ten year dating anniversary and so I thought I’d tell you the story of how we met and got together. I’ve told it on the internet but never in the newsletter.

We met working on an unsuccessful congressional race, an attempted Tea Party flip across a theoretically purple district that at the time spanned seven counties. It was my first job out of college. I worked out of our HQ in “downtown” Dexter, and she was in Eaton County at a field office. We met for the first time on July 4, 2014, when we marched in a parade together and I told her I liked her bag, a burgundy, peacock print Longchamp Le Pliage, as we sat next to each other quietly eating the local fire department’s chicken. It wasn’t until a month or so later that we had a real conversation for the first time when I was in her field office while our candidate was out knocking doors. I remember the love with which she spoke about her college friends, and she remembers me eating her salted caramel cookie. She was tall, with stunning dimples and perfect teeth. I was in a long distance relationship with my first girlfriend at the time, and I remember feeling… something…  but I didn’t think too much of it.

Fast forward to Election Night. I had broken up with the girlfriend a month prior and was excited to be single and out for the first time! I thought, I don’t know if she’s gay, but if she is, I’m going to sleep with her. She was a college basketball player, but I was still a baby gay not trying to stereotype! After we lost, we drank a lot of angry balls (Angry Orchard + Fireball, yum) and she remembers watching me put my number in her phone, thinking, I could sleep with this girl tonight if I wanted to.

I’d never felt prouder of myself than when I woke up on November 5, 2014. My first one night stand! Except I wanted to see her again, so I told her as much. Our first date was on Black Friday. I suggested Jolly Pumpkin because “it has great beer!”, not knowing she does not and never has drank beer. I was twelve minutes late because I had to buy tampons - each time she tells the story, she adds three minutes to how late I was. She may be up to thirty minutes by now. I moved to DC the following Monday. It was casual! We texted some. Then she came to DC to celebrate a friend’s CPA a couple weeks later. Then I was home for Christmas. She claims this is where I fell in love with her, but I didn’t know for a couple more months.

I was exploring my new city and joined the apps, but nothing came of them. I would swipe around as I waited to transfer metro lines but only wanted to talk to her. I picked out the perfect birthday card and mailed it to her, then I called her on her birthday, January 5. We’d been texting daily, but never on the phone. My strategy was: I’ll call her for the first time to wish her a happy birthday and then the ball is in her court to call me next. She never called, and even tried to slow ghost me because she could tell I was vying for her to text me first. LOL. I trust this paints a picture of how truly young we were. I was sprung, so I texted her after four days. 

At the time, I was working for a Senator from Hawaii and had been promised a work trip to Hawaii that never happened when my boss’s dad fell ill. The weekend that I would’ve been going to Hawaii, she came to visit instead. It was President’s Day, which means it was Valentine’s Day weekend. We spent the weekend the way that long distance lesbians do. When she left, my roommate asked me if we had talked about “what we were.” I said, “Neither of us really wants to do long distance, so we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing and it’s fine! It’s going really well and I’m happy.”

Reader, it was not fine. A couple weeks later she tried AGAIN to slow ghost me. I called her: “You can end it if you want to, but you have to do it over the phone, not text!”

Her: “I just think we are on different pages. You want a relationship and I can’t offer you that.”

Me: “I don’t a relationship! I am too new to the city! I’ve been in a long distance relationship before, too! I don’t want that again! I just want to keep doing what we’re doing!  I’m fine!”

Reader, I WAS NOT FINE!

I got drunk and cried at a party because I realized I was in love with her and she didn’t want to be in a relationship and so we could never speak ever again because I couldn’t be in her life just as a friend.

When I was in college, I had a long, dramatic crush on my high school prom date. He had a girlfriend and I believed I loved him. I never told him, and it took me years to get over the feelings. I believe that part of what took me so long to get over him was the fact that I never was honest with him about how I felt. So, I decided that in order to get over her one day, I needed to tell her I’d fallen in love with her.

Picture me on my Ikea bed in my shoebox bedroom surrounded by twinkle lights on the phone: “I didn’t mean for this to happen, but I’ve been thinking and I realized… I fell in love with you.”

She was silent.

I tried hard to keep from talking.

Then she said, “It takes me a lot longer to feel that way about someone.”

It was the perfect response. She didn’t say she loved me when she didn’t, she didn’t say she’d never love me. She was honest, but kept the door open.

It was a Sunday night. She told me she needed some time to think, that she had ignored her ex for a week after she first said I love you. So we got off the phone, and I thought I’d hear from her the following weekend.

Tuesday I get a text: “Sorry, butt dial. I will call you later tonight.” (My phone hadn’t even rung).

She called me that night and told me that she can’t do this, that she wasn’t in a place to do long distance. I said, “Okay, then we can never talk again. I can’t be just your friend.” But neither of us wanted to get off the phone and end on that note. So we talked for hours, just about random shit. Tears were silently running down my face. Yet again in my twinkle lights lying on my bed. The drama! I remember we talked about her relationship with her brother. One of the things that always drew me to her was how loyal she is, how she loves her people. We had opposite interests but the same values. I just knew we could be perfect together, but I wasn’t going to try to fight for something she didn’t want. We eventually got off the phone late that night. I had shot my shot, and I had missed.

So I thought, for a miserable twelve hours. I had lunch with my friend who worked on the Hill, I went in and ran call time with my boss. I remember sitting in front of the Library of Congress, staring at the Capitol Dome hidden beneath construction, trying to be the girl from the 2000s rom com who knows she’s going to be alright.

That night, I was updating my phone and doing who knows what on my laptop when I received an iMessage to my computer. “Hey, are you up? Can we talk?” (Yes, she broke up with me then hit me with the “you up.”)

Me: “I am updating my phone, I’ll call you when I’m done.”

Also me: Called 45 seconds later

She of course tried to play it cool. “How are you? What’s up? How was your day?”

Me: “Ummm… my part hasn’t changed. Has yours?”

Also me: “Is there something you want to ask me?”

Her: “Will you be my girlfriend?”

That was March 11, 2015. Gay marriage was legalized with Obergefell v. Hodges June 26, 2015. She moved to DC in April 2016. We moved in together July 2017. We got engaged March 2020 and we were legally married on October 22, 2021.

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