One table immediately stuck out, because it was the only one with a small delicate red flower arrangement in its center. It sat right at the edge of the cliff. The chairs where drawn back and we both set down gleefully taking in the mesmerizing scene.
“I have a surprise for you!” the manager, flanked by two doting waiters, said with obvious excitement. “Please let me know when you are ready to order.”
We both smiled broadly. This day could not go any better!
We both looked up from our large leather bound menus. Daisy looked so happy! She leaned over the table offering a kiss. I closed my eyes and felt every bit of my being tingle with happiness as our lips met.
Oh that kiss! …every kiss!
Well, I guess I might have dreamed of something like this kiss, the first time I saw Daisy, but to be honest,
in that very first moment I was probably dreaming of something slightly more crude in nature. Seriously, most guys would have felt their hormones go a little wild. She
is that kind of a sight - daisy dukes and all!
But for our first meeting this was of little consequence, in fact it would not play much of a role for another three years. It was
something else, something deeper that she triggered in me, something that happened only minutes after she stepped into my life, something subtle and utterly unexpected.
She rushed through the living room that day giving everyone an equally warm smile. She cast me a quick glance before she disappeared with a look of determination, to finish whatever business she had come into in this dorm room for.
It was an exciting night, like all nights in those first days in College, it was laden with promises.
We had all gotten used to life’s wildest promises and desires being fulfilled on a daily basis. The air was heavy with sexual thoughts, creativity and rebellious intellectual urges. Just being here, here in College was the accumulation of all my dreams: studying in America, being secluded amongst other artists - all of it, just like in those American television shows!!
I had spent the 6 month before in a strict born-again household, which confused me utterly. No one here had any parents to tell us anything and many of us were discovering themselves for the first time, spraying a potent cocktail of freedom and uncompromising individualism into the atmosphere, which made us all drunk.
Freedom, it was all about limitless freedom!
So the group of guys, who had just been smiled at so warmly, gave each other excited glances and nodded in unanimous agreement. Someone let out a silent wolf-whistle. I turned around and saw Daisy in the hallway between the bedrooms gesturing dramatically.
I drank up her sight, slightly buzzed from the night and a beer that had been handed to me.
When she disappeared again, one of the guys leaned in and motioned at the others to form a huddle, paused dramatically and said: “Forget it! - .....That chick is like
MARRIED to her boy!”
He smiled with satisfaction and watched the news sink in in. He was now an authority on the subject at hand. With obvious joy he observed how the guys fell back into their slumped positions on the sofa letting out deflated sighs.
Everyone except
me!
On me this remark had a profoundly different effect. It rumbled through my innards and down the highly convoluted corridors of my “self”, of my perception of what the world was and how it worked.
I felt a rush, an internal reorganization taking place.
I felt excited in a very different way than when I first laid eyes on this girl.
OK, I have to explain something here: while my English at this time was not at all bad ( I had held my own in quite a few challenging conversation and would not have had any trouble understanding or passing the SAT exam), but still, there were some holes in my knowledge of English, especially when it came to casual phrases in casual contexts.
Therefore I completely (I mean utterly) disregarded the little word
“like"....(married). I thought she
WAS married.
I had to turn around again catching glances of her as she moved to and fro, sucking up her sight with an entirely different quality of emotion then before. I felt something warm, something unfamiliar. I felt like the world had taken an unexpected quantum leap, something unusual, like my first arousal, but not sexual. I felt a shift in my deepest core. The bulwark of my understanding of the world came crumbling down and beyond it lay a new beginning...the world was opening up.
"Go talk to her!", someone ripped me out of my daydream.
"...?" I looked at the three guys in bewilderment searching for the one who had addressed me.
"The party! Dude, You were looking for a party, right? Well,...she is going to one. Go! Go get directions!"
"Oh,... oh yeah!" I mumbled, got up and walk over to the bedrooms. She was still engaged in noisy negotiations, I waited till everyone seemed happy with the exchange. I did my best to sound calm, as I ask her whether I could join their party.
She responded as welcoming as I had expected, but immediately folded up her forehead in the cutest gesture of concern. Thinking out loud, she pondered, how we could fit me into the small 2 door hatchback, which was already crammed full of people beyond regulation.
"I have a car." I interrupted her solo deliberation.
As we walked out through the pink maze of the dorms’ balconies and staircases, I could feel her intense presence. I immediately noticed how observant she was, how
kind. She asked me all kinds of questions (some of bizarre nature). As soon as I had told her, I was from Germany she began talking in a more slow and enunciated manner, as if she had suddenly disregarded any of my former verbal utterings as proof of my ability to speak and understand English. It seemed like for her the fact that I was from Germany, did not at all go together with my speaking English.
But for what seemed like an eternity of time I couldn’t even correct her mistake, I didn’t even notice. All I could think and feel was the resonance of that shift in me that had changed my world a minute ago. I couldn’t get enough of that undefined new thought, not enough of her sight. All desire to jump her bones or conquer her as a trophy of my sexual prowess and worth had vanished and had been replaced by a much deeper appreciation. I was filled with the astonishment of a spiritual break through and she stood in front of me as the one who provided it with nothing but her presence.
"Married" I thought. She is
married. That presence of her that filled an entire college apartment and x-rayed everyone in there, such a presence had in my world, nothing, but absolutely nothing to do with the word
"married". It was impossible!
But there she was, living and breathing proof ...talking to me in slow over pronounced words and radiant with an irresistible field of warmth and kindness, deliciously unaware of her own beauty or how much she stirred me inside.
And then, all of a sudden, like a rapidly clearing fog, opening to a stunning view, a thought began to break through. I thought what I NEVER, never, never ever thought before. I thought what I had been excessively trained by my very own mother
NOT to think.
I overcame all odds, racing down to the finish line, which separates a notion from clear thought, I tore through the ribbon and there it was: I hesitantly formed the words in my head:
"I.. want ..to.. get… married....I WANT to get married! Oh my god? – Why am I thinking this? …,but I do! I do! I do!"
Everything else that happened that night was inconsequential. It didn't matter. I didn't mind that she just gave me a quick "Hey, here we are!" at the party and then disappeared in-between the beer spills and into the grinding crowd. Sure I tried to find her just to catch another glimpse of her. But by no means did I feel, that there was anything greater that she could give me than what she had already given me. It was the day she first changed who I am. Would there be other ways in which she could do the same for me again? Other things she could do for me?...it did not matter. I was a already a happy man.
Today, 14 years later. It's our 10 year wedding anniversary.
And I am a still happy man. A happier man then I could ever conceive possible….and MARRIED!
Originally Posted by Sweetness
