When I Met Her

By twenty-seven, I felt pretty clearly defined. I knew who I was. I was a smart, young professional who always made wise relationship choices. I imagined life as a trek up a steep mountain toward success, and the safest way to reach the top was to hew closely to a well traveled path. Having followed one of these paths, at this time I was a new attorney, living in Boston with a very nice boyfriend and beginning discussions about marriage. That was the next stop on my path, followed by a house and some children. Aside from a few, teenage detours, I’d stayed on this path, and it had served me pretty well.

Then, one evening, I had a meeting with a witness on a domestic violence case. I met her at reception. I greeted her professionally, with a firm handshake and direct eye contact. I was immediately stopped by the impossible softness of her hand, it felt so tiny and delicate in mine, and the absolute blackness of her eyes. She had eyes without pupils, like endlessly deep pools. I wanted to drown in them. I recovered quickly and directed her toward the conference room. Her perfume lingered in the air as I walked behind her. She smelled amazing. I wanted to be closer to her. I wanted to press my face against her neck. Instead, I offered her a seat and took my own.

We started with small talk. Could I ask her the name of her perfume? Isn’t that the sort of question women must sometimes ask each other? I didn’t risk it. Instead we talked about the weather, the traffic, and soon we were discussing the qualities of perfectly cooked rice. I hadn’t met many people who could hold a conversation on rice.

Eventually, we moved to the purpose of our meeting. She worked for a non-profit helping newly immigrated women in the community, and one of those women was my client. Her employer had suggested her as a witness for my case. She would be a terrible witness. She only knew hearsay. She could only offer support for a scant handful of minor facts. At the end of the meeting, I said — “We should schedule another meeting to prepare in case we go to trial.”

I was going to see her again. I walked home thinking about her blackest eyes, the softness of her skin, her delightful black curls, particularly one little ringlet that bounced just over her right eye. I mapped out the rest of our lives, and, at home, I laid down wondering if I ever knew myself. I placed two pillows between my body and that of my boyfriend. We had been living together for a few years at this point. He had already asked me to marry him because it would make good financial sense. I suggested that was not a good enough reason for me. Now, I closed my eyes beside him as my brain buzzed with new connections and retrieved memories for viewing beneath a new lens, like the first time I saw a Hawaiian Tropic commercial, it was a tanning oil commercial in the 80s, I should have known right then.

I had never experienced this before, but I knew what this feeling was. I had read about it, watched movies about it, and my friends were always in and out of it. At twenty-seven, I assumed I already understood it very well. I’d talked about men with my girlfriends. “Don’t naked men kind of look like frogs?” They’d say things like “They do! They look so weird. Men are so lucky we love them!” “Yeah, OK…” I thought we just all felt that way, kind of “ew” about guys, but we still liked them, and one day I’d magically fall in love with one.

I’d had plenty of relationships. As a young woman, I felt overwhelmed by men. Dating one was the easiest way to get the rest of them to leave me alone. So, I chose funny, conventionally attractive men, and I dated them until I just couldn’t anymore. I always found myself coming back to the question, what makes a person leave the realm of friend or boyfriend and become “family.” Was that something I would just know when I “fell in love”? Was this “love” even something real or did we just make the best option work?

Now, I wondered, is this how my boyfriend feels about me? Was he always rambling about the softness of my hands because my hands felt to him the way her hands feel to me? If a man had felt this way about me, then I’d probably been rather cruel to him. I thought about all these things while my boyfriend slept in happy ignorance, never questioning my little pillow walls.

In the morning, I awoke a pragmatist. My boyfriend and I exited our brownstone apartment and walked across the Common where we would part ways to go to work. “Love you.” “Love you.”

One meeting with one person can’t be the sort of thing that changes an entire future and identity, not in real life. Maybe this didn’t need to mean anything. It probably didn’t mean anything. I had twenty-seven years of presumed and apparent heterosexuality. It couldn’t be more than 5% of the population that identified as gay. It was just too unlikely that this was really something I needed to be concerned about. This was probably just some sort of pheromone thing, nothing to upset a whole life over. I told myself this and committed to believing it.

I went to my boyfriend’s office party. Two drinks in, I messaged her. “Come to this party. We have old school arcade games and the Rock Bank stage is ridiculous.” She arrived, two drinks in as well. For the rest of the night, it was just me, her, Mortal Kombat and an open bar.

Her skin felt like warm caramel. We drank too much, we leaned against large, cold glass windows, forehead to forehead, nose to nose in silence. We just barely avoided crossing any definite lines, but our thoughts could be read by anyone who looked our way. Maybe I should have felt worried or ashamed, but at that moment, I only knew that this was the way my life was meant to be, and any consequences that would follow were simply a part of my fate. I had never asked anyone on a date in my life. “Let me see you tomorrow, oysters and wine at Bouchee.”

I went home with my boyfriend, and laid down on my side of the pillow wall. I thought about everything I ever expected my life to be: hot shot attorney, trophy wife, super mom. Would I trade that in for sexual deviant, partially recognized marriage, poor adoption prospects? I had walked this path for twenty-seven years, surely I could continue, couldn’t I? I desperately wanted two things that could not co-exist.

I told myself, maybe if I spent more time with her I would get bored with her or immune to her pheromones. It didn’t work. My boyfriend and I broke up. I felt like I was free falling. My life felt unstable, unknown and unknowable. We burned cash on extravagant nightly dates. We had standing tables at Bouchee and the Four Seasons.

Then, she moved to New York.

I felt like a piece of me was missing. I knew that time would run its course; it always does. Surely, that piece would heal.

It didn’t.

She moved back. A year later we got married. Then we bought a condo. Then we had a baby. When I first met her, I loved her more than I knew was possible, and today I can say that even then, I was only scratching the surface of what love can be. The safety of that well-path could not compete with the life that was waiting for me on my own path, and I’m so happy that I let myself fall in love for that very first time.