i'm writing this now, because it's fresh and new and still terrifying and happifying all at the same time, but i won't be able to post it for a while lest my parents find out early... it will all make sense in a minute...
last february ('99), i was a lost soul. lonely and dejected, having just given up on the latest of a long line of pointless, unrequited crushes, i'd fallen into a rut of working late every day and reading slashdot compulsively. i'd given on on real life, given up on women, the whole nine yards. the band was falling apart and everything i loved about life had totally lost its lustre. then i saw a post deep in a slashdot discussion about female programmers. this post was from a female programmer. i don't remember really at all what she'd said, but i found it intriguing enough to follow the homepage link at the top of the post... to be greeted by nothing other than the beautiful image of a black strat and a sunburst les paul lying across one another on an oriental rug. farther on down the page, images of jimmy page, and a naked furby, and the frenetic rantings of a true geek. on another page i found a sort of journal entry chronicling the horrors of playing in a country band with old farts just for the gig. i felt some comraderie there, having played in a classic rock cover band in high school with guys twice my age, so i hit the "email me" link and wrote an encouraging story about my experiences.
i got two replies: the first, the standard "yeah, thanks" reply that reeks of keeping a safe distance, and the next, after she'd read my homepage, consisting simply of the line, "gee, scott, you're really attractive."
this was quite interesting, in my opinion. i remember how the hair stood up on the back of my neck. a distinct sense of excitement. we talked via email for a couple of months, then in a real-time talking setup on my server, sending snail mail back and forth, exchanging jewelry and music and lewd jokes... and i fell in love with her. one day she called me at work, having used a little bit of magick to divine my number, and later that week admitted that she was in love with me. then the long distance bills started to rack up, and i started using my engineer's salary to purchase airfare to houston, where she lives. deeper and deeper... after the first in-person meeting, partially clandestine, i knew i wanted to be with this person, i knew i'd found my soul mate.
thanks to the fact that she was (and still is) poor, she couldn't fly around as freely as i. we planned loosely for her to visit me here in february of 2000, and maybe to meet my folks at that time.
and then her family invited me along on a vacation to the caribbean, to hang out on a sailboat for a week and a half. how do you refuse something like this? so in december, three days before christmas, we pile into a jet and fly to roatan, off the coast of honduras. it's remote, beautiful, and just bizarre.
christmas night, fireworks going off all around, the pre-moonrise sky so full of stars it seems ready to burst, we stand alone on the bowsprit of the Wanderer, moored in a calm cove, watching the sky with awe, overcome by the beauty of nature... and i am overcome with the beauty of her soul, beaming to me from behind her luscious green eyes... something in me snaps... my blood fills with adrenaline, and i'm giddy and short of breath... i gently turn her around and look her straight in the eyes, holding both her hands and bracing myself. and the words flow out of my mouth of their own accord... "very truthfully and honestly... do you love me?" "yes," she replies, beaming. and my next words surprise me: "marry me." her eyes grow wide, and her grin wider, and she does not hesitate to choke "okay" through tears of joy... in my excitement i've forgotten myself... at some point i actually get down on my right knee, a precarious position on the narrow peninsula of a catwalk at the front of the vessel, and ask her again, more formally, to be my wife. i still can't believe what i'm doing, but nothing has ever felt more right. she pulls me up and squeezes me with a hug that easily wins out over that first hug in august, when we met as old friends for the first time... this was a hug of extreme happiness.
.....
like i said, this is my greatest insanity of all time. i never in a million years thought i'd get married. i had no intention of getting engaged on the trip. okay, so i had a promonition that it might happen on new years, and was trying to hold off, but i was not at all planning on it.
and what's worse, i can't tell my parents yet because they haven't even had a chance to meet the girl. all in good time...
[stay tuned for more updates....]
Wed Jan 5 23:46:10 EST 2000