Lots of people went around saying we had started a new millennium. We hadn't; we were in the final year of the old one.
I broke up with my fiancee in an incredibly-slow process that probably ensured she hated me as much as possible at the end. I started very casually seeing a girl from Arizona. She went to Europe for the summer, and mailed me a letter telling me she didn't like me anymore. She must have really wanted to let me know, since Air Mail is more expensive than a standard letter.
Then I dated a really tall girl. She was fun; at the video store (remember those?) the clerk asked, "Are you two, like, the tallest couple in the world?" and she said, "We might be." (I've since seen a news article about the tallest couple in the world, and it wasn't us.)
The tall girl was done with me in one month. (Yes, everybody breaks up with me. I'm aware of what this says about my quality.) The day she broke up with me was Persephone's birthday, so I sent Persephone a happy birthday e-mail. She answered. We e-mailed a few times.
Back at college for my final semester (you only get to fail three semesters in a row before they kick you out), Persephone was finishing college the actual, graduating way. She was student teaching at a high school and invited me to go to her school's football game, but I was busy that evening. I invited her to go to a dinner with a senator (I was chairman of College Republicans at the largest university in the state). At the dinner, the senator's staff took our picture and said they'd mail it to us. They didn't.
The year before at a College Republicans meeting, we had a speaker who was like a real-life Indiana Jones. He had gotten himself smuggled into Chechnya to make a documentary about it. (How do you get yourself smuggled into Chechnya? He said he went to Azerbaijan and let some people know of his interest, then just waited to get kidnapped.) At the end of his talk, he was selling copies of his documentary. The chairman at the time directed me, the treasurer, to buy a copy for the club. Transactions were through his assistant, who was smoking hot. The next year as chairman I had a lot of election-year debate appearances, and after one a good-looking girl came up to talk to me. I invited her to the club's election-night watch party. But the election wasn't over yet when the campus buildings were getting locked up. I mentioned I didn't have a TV to watch the results, so she invited me over to her place. We ended up dating for a little bit, and that was when I found out that she was the assistant I'd talked to the year before. And that she had dated the real-life Indiana Jones. And that she was the one who ended their relationship. This obviously meant one thing: I was cooler than Indiana Jones!
I had two apartment-mates: one was a psycho in the ROTC who slept with a knife under his mattress, and the other was a Chinese national. The Chinese kid was super nice and very interested in American politics. As the election came nearer and the outcome seemed like it would be very close, I began in my position as chairman of College Republicans agitating against voter fraud. The Chinese kid was intrigued when I described how easy voter fraud was in America and he said he was going to vote in the election. I had to talk him out of it. I've since seen a news story about him and his goal last year to ask for outlandish things as a way of experiencing failure every day.
The fall semester ended and I knew I wasn't going to be allowed back to school in January. I went home for Christmas, and so did Persephone. Through e-mails and phone calls we had become somewhat of friends again, but once we were back home, she ignored me again. I persevered and invited her to a friend's sister's birthday party. At the party, I invited her to a New Year's Eve party. I remember finishing The Winter of Our Discontent (my favorite novel ever) before going to pick her up so that it would count for my 2000 page total. She answered the door in a tank top. I'd made a good choice.
We went to the party and had awkward interactions. We were there together, but not really sure if we were dating. People are supposed to kiss at midnight, but I wasn't really sure she wouldn't punch me (see: 1992), so when the clock struck midnight I...
via oneofthebest
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