Our First Date

Song Lyric of the Day:

You already know / That I’m all yours / What you waiting for?

Nelly Furtado featuring Timbaland / “Promiscuous”

11:11AM.
Rich and I went on our first date nine years ago today. I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year, and he called me out of the blue.

“Guess who this is.”

A lot of hemming and hawing later I still had no clue. “I give. Who is this?”

“It’s Rich.”

“Oh, my God! How are you?”

“Good. I’m back in town.”

“Great!”

“Are you married?”

“No.”

“Engaged?”

“No.”

“Dating anyone?”

“No.”

“Kids?”

“No.”

“Wanna get some coffee?”

“Okay.”

And so it began. We met up that night at a local bookstore cafe. As soon as I laid eyes on him, in his tight black tee shirt and cords, I decided I was going to give him a hug. He later admitted that when he saw me, he thought, “I hope she hugs me.”

We hung out for a couple of weeks, watching movies and hanging with friends, before Rich finally asked me out on a real date. Actually, faxed me out. He sent me a fax at work asking me if I’d like to have dinner and maybe catch a movie afterwards. I showed the fax to my coworker at the time, Tiffany.

“Does this sound like a date? I mean, we’ve never had a meal together. It’s a date, right?’

Tiffany agreed that it definitely sounded like he was asking me out.

I faxed back my reply: yes.

Once Rich received my fax, he showed it to his then coworker, Matt.

“This is a date, right? We’ve never had dinner together. It’s a date, right?”

After following up with a phone call, we agreed to meet at Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant (it’s no longer in business).

Dinner was good, the conversation easy and natural. Afterwards, we decided to go ice skating. I’d never been, so it was a great excuse for me to flirt by hanging on to him. Rich was pretty agreeable with that. I was proud of myself–I managed to not fall down once. Rich, on the other hand, tried to impress me by skating backwards and fell a couple of times, endearing himself forever to me.

After ice skating, we decided to catch a movie, Contact. We ended up at the Carmike 10, where Brent worked at the time. This was my chance to make a great impression on Rich.

Brent said hi and went to tear our tickets.

“Hey, you remember Earl?”

I laughed. “Yeah. That awful, racist little creep of a manager? What, is he dead or something?”

Brent nodded. “Yeah. His wife died and he couldn’t take it, so he killed himself.”

I shot a nervous glance at Rich, who was staring with his mouth open.

Brent jumped in again. “Enjoy the movie!”

The movie ended, but Rich and I still weren’t ready to say goodnight. So we drove back to his parents’ house, where he was living in the separate room adjacent to the garage (I was also living with my parents at the time, enjoying the heady days of no rent). We hung out, talking and listening to records. Yes, good, old-fashioned, vinyl records. Rich likes to say that we bonded over “I Love the Nightlife.” I do, in fact, love to boogie on the disco round. Oh, yeah.

Several hours passed when I started receiving harassing phone calls from my mom asking me where the hell I was and did I know what time it was. I knew where I was, but I had no idea that it was almost five in the morning at this point.

Rich walked me to my car where he kissed me goodnight/good morning after the longest, best first date I’d ever had.

And that was the kiss that sealed the deal.

11:32PM.
Rich and I had a nice, romantic dinner at Northshore Brasserie tonight. He ordered the duck confit while I had steak au poivre. We enjoyed talking about how we’ve changed over the years and how we still manage to surprise each other with new facets of our personalities and various quirks. While we waited for dessert to arrive, he told me to go ahead and open my anniversary gift. So what did my guy get me? A kick-ass Holga camera. It’s made almost entirely of plastic and uses film. No digital wizardry here. Rich completely hooked me up: camera, film, lenses, filters, the works. I can’t wait to use it, hopefully this weekend. His timing was great as I was just thinking yesterday that I need to take a day soon where I just drive around Knoxville taking photos. Hopefully I’ll get to do that this weekend.

So what did I get him, you ask? As of right now, nothing. Why, you ask? Because I’m broke. Between extra credit card payments and my bridesmaid’s dress, I’m tapped out. (Remember, I’m repaying the money I used to buy the Mac.) At least I get paid this week. And Rich is very understanding.

While he worked on freelance projects tonight, I continued familiarizing myself with my Mac and looked through the Holga manual. We finally got to talk to Aunt Bea and Uncle Louis after playing phone tag the last few nights. It was great hearing that married life is treating the newlyweds well. I particularly enjoyed hearing how much Bea enjoys reading my blog; I really think she’s my number one fan. She’s even got her coworkers weighing in on their own Fantasy Second Husbands©. I’m happy to hear others are jumping on the bandwagon.