Wednesday, March 6, 2002
A Tale of Two Chickies
She Says:
She billed herself as a tall blond. She thought Nina Simone's "Want a Little Sugar in My Bowl" was sexy. And she knew the difference between compliment and complement. Who cares if I currently had a girlfriend I'd pursued doggedly for six months before she capitulated; how could I resist a blond word-savvy siren? We could just be friends, I thought. Pen pals. After all, she's 1500 miles away down in South Florida of all places. And I have a girlfriend. Who was 3000 miles away in California for four months. Who, while having so many good qualities I wouldn't even know where to start in listing them, wouldn't know a subjunctive from a conjunction.
So I answered the ad. And she wrote back. And I answered again. And so on. And so forth. And three months later, I cajoled her into calling me. It was all downhill from there. I mean, come on. The woman had a working vocabulary that knocked my socks off. On the phone. In her email. She claimed she was looking for her complement, and we played off each other's interests like no one I'd ever met before. Literature, music, science, social commentary, self-improvement. The beginning emails were revelations (Me: "Do you like classical music?" Her: "Actually, I'm a pianist who takes and teaches lessons." Her: "I've been working in an engineering lab." Me: "I was a physics major in college." and so on), and we just sank into each other once we started in on the phone. Our aural conversational frequency has been such that I've had to start budgeting for my long-distance phone bill.
Now, sixteen months after our first contact, after two breakups, three moves, months of psychotherapy, only a couple misunderstandings, seemingly countless delays, and endless hours of pleasurable (and flirtatious and downright sexy and caring and and and) conversation, we have met three times, talk every day, and plan on being local in the near future. The click between us is esounding, and I know no greater comfort than lying in my bed with her, limbs intertwined, listening to Rachmaninoff or Respeghi, or reading to her out of a favorite book.
In other words, we are a success story of the highest order.
She Says:
Woman seeking woman and she was my first taker a pen pals proposal of course, because she did have a rather sizable appendage in the form of a girlfriend. (Come to think of it, I may have had an appendage myself if I wanted to admit it.) Nevertheless, this self-proclaimed crotchety moralist infiltrated my ebox, my snailbox, my telephone, and my dreams before finally appendages severed, stitched, and various forms of consoled wedging herself into my 3-D reality. (Who could resist such charm anyway?)
She filled my eyes that first time, from her soles to her cropped hair, as I scrolled down the airport escalator suppressing a minor stroke and paying mind not to trip over my bags into a girlish splat at her feet. Sixteen months, three visits, two symphonies and infinite towers of words later, she makes me cake from scratch and I expend no small dollop of energy lining up the bread on her sandwiches and pretending to squeeze the toothpaste tube from the bottom. Punctual, debt-free (I did say reality); passionate, consuming, complex; she wiped all directions off my compass but North.
Now I roll my thumbs and twitter, counting the days until I can gather her up in my eyes and arms again. Her dark brown hair, the wells of her brown eyes. Her snowy skin, blush lips, and plump wit. There exists no more lethal combination for this woman who sought a woman.
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