two years.

I was wearing a filthy, grease spotted blue uniform with a neckerchief that had achievement pins all over it. I had on a headset with a microphone. I had pink hair down to the middle of my back. I was a supervisor. I was arrogant, I could run that place, and fuck you if you thought 15 years of experience made you anything but way older than me.

A new kid was starting, according to the schedule. Some idiot Jesse was training him, and I was convinced that I should be the one teaching this green-haired moron how to run a cash register, because OBVIOUSLY no one else was qualified to do it. So I strutted over and humiliated Jesse about the way his tie was tied. I said something horribly demeaning like, “how are you supposed to be training someone when you can’t even get a CLIP ON TIE RIGHT?”, and sent him in the back to help in the grill.  I took over the training.

He was no prize either. He really had green hair, and once I learned he went to my high school, I realized he was one of those dudes who wore a fishnet shirt under his t-shirt with his zipper-pants. As the months went on, he developed hideous acne – the kind that oozes and pops without warning, and every visible inch of skin was covered in it.  But he DID have these incredibly honest blue eyes and a smile that instantly made the room warmer by five degrees.

But for some reason, it was different from the first sentence. My anger dissipated, and we had an easy going back and forth that didn’t make me feel like I had to prove myself, or compete for air space. He was listening, and taking me seriously, and without a trace of irony or insincerity. And after that day, I checked my schedule against his every single week until I quit that horrible place.

One of the first times I drove him home, we’d been having some intense conversation all night at work, and I’m pretty sure neither of us wanted it to end. We pulled up to his driveway, and he invited me in for some tea. I started laughing and asked him if “that’s what you’re calling it these days”, and drove away. I teased him about it for years, never realizing that he was trying to tell me something important.

About a year later, I had just started dating some idiot. I had only been with him for about 48 hours when Alan and I found ourselves scrubbing freezers at work for a health inspection. I was telling him the story of how me and what’s-his-nuts got together, and there was a weird silence that I never felt before with us. It was exactly at that moment that I realized I was in love, or something like it. Two tons of weight landed squarely on my back. I screwed up my courage and said, as nonchalantly as possible, “Hey, Alan? How come we never dated? We have this crazy chemistry, and I feel like by all accounts I should be completely infatuated with you.”

He gave a sort of non-committal answer about us not being ready, shrugged, and we both moved on. But my heart was beating like mad.

Port Jefferson, New York

The year before he left for the army was non stop. Alan and Amy at the McDonald’s Christmas party, at the coffee shop, on the docks at Port Jeff, at the mall,  at the beach, driving nowhere for hours, six-flags, some shitty battle of the bands… We’d meet for breakfast, and not say goodbye until dinner. But we were always dating other people. 

I remember one day we were driving and talking about his army plans, and I lost it. I started crying, and I pulled the car over. I blurted it out -all of it. He was obviously stunned, and he sort of just put his hand on my knee and said, “Amy, of course I love you too.” And that was it. I calmed myself down, and kept driving. Nothing else ever came of it.

The weirdest part about Alan was that I never talked about us to anyone. I would talk at length about any other assholes I had crushes on, but never managed to squeak out the Alan thing to any of my friends. It just sounded stupid in my head. I felt like I was being foolish and naive to think that this was seriously going to pan out at some distant point in his post-army future.

I was there the morning he left for the army. I had worked with Tracey at Borders the night before, and I tried to ask her calmly to let me take the next day off, but when I tried to explain that my “best friend” was leaving for the army, I broke down in heaving sobs on the middle of the sales floor. She hugged me and told me of course I could call in sick the next morning. She seemed confused because she’d never really heard of Alan…

The next morning, it was me, his family, a friend since childhood, and a next-door neighbor best friend. I felt like I didn’t belong there. I felt like I was intruding. He gave me a little army figurine, and told me that he got to his goals, and that he wanted me to get to mine. A few days after he left, his mother came to my house with a few pictures from that day, and his mailing address in basic, all in a little envelope with a smiley face sticker. She thought we were dating, and this came as such a devastating shock to me that I cried for hours.

The first time he came home for leave, I stopped over. We talked until everyone else in the house had gone to bed, listening to classical radio. We gradually got more and more comfortable until we were laying on the couch, falling asleep talking. I stayed all night, right there, with all my clothes on, and my head buried in his chest, just listening to him snore. I left at dawn, because I didn’t want his family to be upset that I was still there.

I remember when I graduated college, Alan bought me one of those bead pillows from that Gadgety store in the mall. I was so confused when he handed it to me that I didn’t, ya know, say thank you or anything, I just looked at it. He explained, “Well, you just graduated college. Now get some sleep.”

Alan was a big part of my decision to leave long island. I would go to Port Jeff, I would see my friends, I would go to the coffee house, but it always felt like there was a ghost following me around. I was 19, and drinking myself into oblivion (handle of rum, 2-liters of soda) about 4 nights a week at the Twisting House. I was lonely all the time, no matter how many friends I had. Then Tracey and I moved to Philadelphia.

In Philadelphia I took the train to work every day. Writing letters to Alan had become an obsession, although we could easily call each other. Some days, I’d take the late train home from work, just so I could find a quiet spot to sit and write to him. I almost never actually sent the letters.

Until the night I did. It was January, and I was more depressed than I had ever been in my whole life. Some of you know why, but I don’t feel like it needs to be in here. I was alone in the apartment, and I drank a bottle of cheap white wine. I stuffed a letter into an envelope telling Alan the way I felt, and marched my wobbly ass down to the mailbox. I sent it, and cried. And cried, and cried. I sat in the center of my kitchen floor, holding onto my knees as if they were coming off of my body, and cried until I couldn’t feel feelings anymore.

What I didn’t know was that Alan was on his way to Ranger school in Georgia. I didn’t know that he wouldn’t be able to contact me until he graduated. So I waited, destroyed, wondering every day why he wouldn’t answer his phone or write back to me. It was more or less on my mind CONSTANTLY for the next five months.

Then, on a Wednesday in May, I got a call. He told me to come to Georgia by Sunday, no matter what it cost me. Friday morning, I was in a rental car hauling ass down the eastern seaboard. It was a 14 hour trip, and I had never been so nervous in my whole life. Nobody – not my boss, not my parents, nobody but Tracey knew where I was. 

I never found out where his hotel was, because I couldn’t get back in touch with him after I told him I’d come down. When I hit Atlanta, I called his cell phone to find out where the hell I was going in Columbus, and his confused mother answered the phone. “Alan’s on the phone with Sarah. What do you mean you don’t know where you’re going?”

Saturday night, I found myself in a Chili’s, bewildered at the idea that this man was telling me he’d thought about asking me to marry him, so I could move to Alaska and we could live together. I couldn’t understand what I was listening to. 

I drove back to Philadelphia on Sunday morning, but I don’t remember it. I was too busy singing my heart out, calling everyone I knew, and asking them each to guess where I was (nobody guessed). 

In September of that year I went to Alaska to visit Alan before he left for Iraq. Friday morning we woke up in our little cabin by the spillway, and Alan told me he’d had a nightmare. He dreamt we were getting married, only it was a disaster. At the reception, none of the place settings were labeled, so he had to scurry around and seat everybody. We laughed that the solution to the problem would be to have one big table, like a Viking wedding. Then we started joking about a Viking-themed wedding complete with him dragging me down the aisle by my hair.

Two hours later we were at town hall signing papers. I don’t really remember the discussion, or how it went from a joke to a serious idea. I just know at one point I called Tracey and asked her to look up the marriage requirements for the state of Alaska, and not to ask me any questions. She said “fuck you”, and started crying. We still laugh about it. Then we sat in a sky bridge between two sections of the Anchorage mall and called everyone to tell them.

incoming

In November of 2007 I moved to Alaska with two suitcases (one with my clothes, one with his), a backpack, and my cat. Alan was supposed to get home from Iraq in about two weeks, but I wanted to be there first and make sure he had a home to come home to. The first morning I woke up in my hotel room, it was snowing. I sat on the bed with the cat looking out the window at the snow thinking, this is it. 

Now here we are in Louisiana. Our short relationship has survived an Iraq deployment, a year on separate continents, three moves, me getting to know his incredible family without him being there, ridiculous poverty, and so much more. There still, to this day, has never been any undercurrent of hostility or resentment. We still get lost in conversations that eat away hours. My guard still comes down the minute he enters the room. I’ve never felt demeaned or belittled, and we raised our voices only a handful of times. Just getting all this history out into this entry has me crying like an idiot. 

Last night we drank a bottle of wine and did a puzzle, and laughed about how funny it would be if we woke up and found that the cat and dog had constructed us a jaunty cake. “But… but, how did you get out of your cage?”

And Alan, I love you. Happy anniversary. Sorry for the clumsy writing, I just wanted to get it down here for anyone who doesn’t already know.

battle of some crappy bands, 2003

bye alan. have fun at army. summer 2004.

summer 2005

fairbanks, alaska 2006

engagement party (we’d been married for six months), february 2007

Homecoming. There we are, bottom left. I'm in purple. We are TOTALLY NOT LOOKING AT EACH OTHER and completely disinterested. November 2007.

homecoming, november 2007

5 minutes ago.