How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. - Elisabeth Barret Browning
Listen to the Spotify playlist of this episode here.
It took exactly 5.4 years for two concepts to kill us slowly: How I loved you and why. The whole world could see how much I loved you, but you desperately needed me to spell out why. And for reasons I can only guess at now, I couldn’t - or wouldn’t. Looking back, we were walking a plank from day one - which I suppose is where we should start, at the “meet cute”. It was always my favorite love story to tell, back when I thought it was my last.
It’d only been about a week since I broke up with Frank - or I should say, he broke up with me. I’d moped around the too-quiet suburban rental blasting Elvis Costello on repeat to fill the void - mostly Satellite and God Give Me Strength. I wrote an angry love song and left it on Frank’s answering machine.
I’m getting nothing but eye rolls from friends and family because no one ever quite understood my love for Frank. And that’s fine. I understood it.
You see, I have several weaknesses when it comes to love, and they aren’t mutually exclusive. I love nerdy-smart, beautiful boys, tall boys, full lips, broad shoulders, dry humor, lefties, and creative talent. I also have a special niche love for film-makers, screenplay writers, or anything related.
And so maybe Frank made odd choices like stopping at a Safeway to buy an economy-sized bottle of KY five minutes after picking me up for our first date. But he was nerdy-smart with full lips, dry humor, broad shoulders and musical talent. So I missed running my hands through his coarse brillo-pad hair, caressing the cracks in his eczema-skin with cheap drugstore healing balm supposedly made from oatmeal. And I was grieving that I’d no longer be able to sit front row at a sticky ‘two-top’, sipping pints of IPA while he fronted his rockabilly band in the local bar. I adored watching him sing his little heart out with puckered pout-lips ooooohing and ahhhhing like a fish in the deep sea, his stubby paw-hand strumming like Paddington Bear on crack. I know I’m mixing metaphors here - but that’s as accurate as I can get. He had fish-pout lips on a Paddington Bear body and face.
But now I needed to get in the car and do functional back-to-life things that people do like buy last minute Christmas presents. So I’m naked and wet and doing my very minimal beauty routine which consists of getting clean, playing Morcheeba, and moisturizing my face with drugstore day cream.
I’m in the central bathroom off the hall. A classic 1970s pepto bismol pink tub with matching tile. A clear plastic shower curtain covered in line drawings of colorful fish. A boombox perched precariously by the pink sink, tipped up on the lip of the porcelain because there’s not enough counter space to set it down flat.
I don’t yet own any makeup or hair products besides all-in-one shampoo. I detangle with a wide toothed comb swiped from my mom’s house and let my thick hair air dry. I have two hairstyles at this point: up and down. Today we’re going with ‘down’ because I can’t find a rubber band.
My lipstick equivalent is a tub of addictive mentholated Carmex lip balm with the yellow twist-off lid. My eyebrows are thick and unruly, and when I need to once a month, I’ll rip the darker hairs from my upper lip with tiny strips of wax that look like scotch tape.
Clothes annoy me like a chore, the whole exhausting process of finding and buying them, washing and drying them. I shop in the men’s section because I prefer function over frills: Carharts and Dockers, maybe some OshKosh. Any old socks, and one of three interchangeably basic shoe options: running shoes, Converse or some kind of black leather boot.
There’s a chill in the air, so I pull a sweater over my t-shirt and don my massive men’s ski jacket - the iconic yellow and black Northface bumble bee one that I wore for years down to my knees. I bought it from the men’s section because a) function, and b) no one’s gonna tell me which jacket I can wear. Maybe I like tall handsome boys so much that even dressing like them feels good. Maybe I like to wear ‘their’ clothes, ride ‘their’ skateboards, play ‘their’ guitars. Girls didn’t do much that I liked back then. Girls baked cookies while boys went on survivalist camping trips. Girls did crafts. Boys built forts and formed rock bands, played water polo.
Maybe if girls had been allowed to play water polo, I wouldn’t have coveted the whole boys team, been mesmerized by their glorious arms stretched above the whitewater spray, whipping like ropes around bodies spinning in the water like tops, legs churning in the pool. Bare-chested man-boys, practically naked in their speedos. Swim caps with ear cups tied under their chins like little bonnets, leaving nothing but beautiful faces slick with perspiration and chlorine, mouths open, gulping air. Maybe I wouldn’t have spent 20 years obsessing over one of them. Who knows, maybe I still would have.
It’s December 22, 1999, and the Bay Area’s winter rain has just rinsed the suburbs clean. As a lover of fresh starts and clean slates, the wet streets and impending turn of the century are starting to feel like my moment.
So with my historical weakness for tall beautiful boys - and wearing a jacket that made me feel as confident as one, I drove downtown, hit up Williams Sonoma to get my dad a baking dish, and then walked into that massive chain bookstore like willing prey.
I was looking for a cookbook for my sister and an ephemeris for my mom. I scoped the woowoo aisle and saw all the usual astrology books, sun signs, rising signs, love signs. No ephemeris.
Somebody in the store had to know.
I milled through the aisles til I saw the back of a guy in a Barnes & Noble apron, the tell-tale loop around the back of his neck, the tiniest nub of an inch-long ponytail above his white dress shirt collar, strands falling loose on both sides.
He seemed to be organizing the shelves, and even slightly slumped over, his shoulders were at my eye level.
Excuse me, I said - maybe too softly, because you didn't turn around. I don't usually make it a habit of touching strangers without consent, but something made me take my index finger and boldly tap you on the back of your shoulder. Tap tap. I swear I might’ve felt a spark.
Hello?
You spun around, a little surprised maybe.
Hi - yes? Can I help you?
As you turned, you straightened up to a dramatic height, the crown of your head a good fist above anyone else in the room. 6’4” ( though you’ll argue 6’3”). This felt like power to me. And your face took my breath away. I’d never seen a face like that.
Your hair was fine, straight, shiny jet black - dyed with a box kit - and though mostly pulled back, a few loose strands were tucked behind your ears.
Your giant almond-shaped eyes were a pale blue-green (you’ll say hazel), and spaced wide and symmetrical on either side of a nose that made a statement. Angular with the slightly flared nostrils of a bull. Take every tall milky drink of Dracula teen heart throb fantasy and this is the face.
It was a face that could do all the work, be wielded like a weapon, used as a shield. My mom had always raved about foreheads - the taller the better. She’d dismiss people with low hairlines like they might as well be orangutans. So when I saw this glorious forehead, this flared vampire nose framed between cheekbones sharp as knives and a wide testosterone jaw bone, it was almost like I could hear her and every deceased Irish grandmother on my shoulder, giving me the go-ahead.
At that moment, everything that came before was meaningless, and all the half-naked water polo players in the world couldn’t have drawn my gaze.
I stood there drinking down your features until I was struck by something familiar. I couldn’t place it at first when you were giving me your solemn goth supermodel look. But then a grin slunk slowly across your lips. I knew that wide smile, your signature teeth you think are too large. The teeth I think are perfect.
Hi, um yes, I’m looking for the Ephemeris and wasn't finding it. It’s kind of an encyclopedia of planetary movements? Do you know if you guys carry it?
Looking back it’s funny that you mock astrology and anyone who believes in it and here were my first words to you.
Yeah let me see. Did you already try the astrology/new age section over here?
(People can be so polite and professional when you first meet and if this is someone you’re going to really know, that’ll forever be the last and only moment you saw them as a complete stranger, that you interacted with their public facade. Starting here, you’ll be peeling it back, breaking it down. And maybe you’ll never actually know them, but you’ll feel like you do. This will be the last time you say something polite about Astrology.)
I followed you one aisle over, back to where I’d come from.
Yeah I did, I said. No luck.
While you were skimming the shelves I blurted out:
I know you! Do you know me!?
You spun around so we were facing each other surrounded on both sides by hundreds of books. I no longer cared about the Ephemeris. I had to figure out who you were.
Sorry, what?
Do you recognize me? I recognize you.
Don’t think so, you said.
Shit, this was getting awkward like a pick-up line falling flat. But I was positive and couldn’t let it go. Not only did I feel like I knew you somehow, I felt like I loved you somehow. I felt like you were part of my innocence, my “wonder years”, when everything felt magical and new. Then it hit me. Everything about you had transformed except that smile. The particularly wide and borderline goofy smile was exactly the same as it’d been in 7th grade, beaming at me across the table in art class.
Ohmygod, I’ve got it! Your name is Peter, right?!
Right, you said, calmly. Always the somber one.
You were staring at me with curiosity but deflecting with sarcasm.
I knew I knew you! I was practically screaming in the middle of a crowded Christmas bookstore and you were giving me a look like keep it down, freak. But the turned up corners of your mouth betrayed you.
Umm yeah, my name’s Peter, you said, raising your eyebrows playfully while fingering the giant plastic employee name badge pinned to your apron right in front of my face that read simply PETER in capital letters.
No - really - I didn’t see that. I knew it! I remember you!
I couldn't tell if you weren't buying it or just wanted to fuck with me. Maybe both. But you acted skeptical.
7th grade. Stanley Junior High. You sat next to me in art class. Sadie Jones?
More cynical staring.
I’ll prove I didn’t read your tag. I’ll think of your last name.
I don’t know why, but I found it extremely important in that moment to prove that I remembered you. This was only the beginning of an inextricable urge I’d have for years to argue, debate and prove any little thing to you.
Starts with a B! Italian~? Shit I’m drawing a blank!
Bellini, you said, nonplussed.
Omg yes - Peter Bellini!! You look the same - except, taller, older and your hair - it was blonde and short!
Something in you softened, shifted, opened. You were fucking with me. You were maybe even flirting with me. I’d later learn that not walking away was your version of flirting.
I know you, Sadie Jones.
You did know me. I felt transported by an absurd rush of relief and joy. I honestly can’t say why - and therein lies the problem, but suddenly, I lit up like a firework finale and knew that this moment, unfolding in slow motion, would change the course of my life. I didn’t know these were the eyes I’d stare into for years across a pillow, or whose astigmatism I’d fret over, hitting 5 shops til we found the only glasses that didn’t clutter up my view of them. I didn’t know these were the long legs my cat would arch and purr against, or that these cheap black Dockers would be in my laundry bin by next month. I didn’t know I’d soon be turning your tube socks carefully inside each other with a dreamy grin - but it felt like somehow I did.
We started talking - inappropriately long for an employee and a customer, catching each other up on the 12-year gap since art class. Starting with the basics - the people we both knew, and where you’d transferred away to and why you were back in town. Eventually, you said your shift was ending and you had to get going.
I said, nonchalantly: oh yeah, no prob, me too. I’ll walk out with you.
What I’m thinking is: I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.
I hadn’t bought a thing but suddenly didn’t care.
You pulled off your apron to expose the required white button down dress shirt and black pants. Both were cheap and thin, the kind a guy who doesn’t care about fashion might buy on a student budget. I could see your white cotton V-neck undershirt beneath. And even through that, I could see the two perfect pink circles of your nipples.
We moved quickly through the store, still talking, into the elevator, out the front glass doors into the brisk winter air. The sun had set, street lights lit, and the sidewalk was lined with trees wrapped in twinkle lights.
I bounced and bubbled down the sidewalk beside you, walking ridiculously far in the opposite direction of my car, words floating into the night air.
Not wanting you to know how out of my way I’d gone, I put on the brakes.
Um, I’m the other way actually.
I stood there under the streetlamp with a backpack on and a baking dish shopping bag hooked on one arm. I wanted to kiss you but that was nuts.
Hey can we change phone numbers? I’d love to hang out sometime. Here. Here’s mine.
I took my receipt and a pen from my backpack and used the hard smooth surface of your back to write out my number, trembling slightly as I felt the heat of your skin through the cheap polyester.
Call me. Please. I’m serious, I said, and handed you the receipt with my # on it.
I will, you said, as you stuffed the scrap in your pants pocket. And I believed you.
I went home buzzing and delirious. I hoped you’d call that night - or the next. I was glad I didn’t get your number because I have no patience nor restraint. And surprisingly, I was relishing the rush of endorphins, the wait that forced me to stretch out in delight. I knew you’d call someday and was going to bask in the high until you did.