J + L : A long, drawn-out love story

(NOTE: I began this post in August 2017 and just finished it. So this first bit isn't entirely accurate, but it's why I started it.)

Everyone's kids are starting back to school, and I realized recently that it was exactly thirty years ago that I was gearing up to start a public high school after three years in a private junior high. The only people I knew at Van Buren High School were two girls I'd met candy-striping at St. Edwards that summer - cousins Tam Nguyen and Jan Nguyen - and a guy with whom I'd gone to elementary school, and who had moved across the river into our neighborhood over the summer.

I wish I could tell you about how the clouds parted and the sun shone down and lit up my heart the first time I laid eyes on James, but that's just not how it happened. We were in proximity for a long time before he really registered on my radar.

Our school wasn't tiny, but not nearly as big as it is today. We moved in pretty similar academic circles, and had multiple classes together. The one I remember most from sophomore years was French. James sat beside me, either in front of or behind his girlfriend. They held hands under the desks a lot, and were generally disgusting.

By the end of the year, I considered James a friend, that I know. For some reason, I wasn't really close with his girlfriend. Then in junior year, James and I had even more classes together, and by the time summer rolled around, James was no longer in a relationship. And I was interested.

For the life of me, I can't remember how this happened, but at some point, I was invited to play Dungeons and Dragons at James's house several times over the summer. I'd never played before, but totally wanted to hang out, so I jumped at the chance. I also sucked really badly at it. I couldn't keep the races straight, or remember what my strengths were, or anything fun like that. I got killed every dang week, early, but I kept coming back because... well, I wasn't exactly having fun, but I enjoyed the company.

You'll have to forgive my foggy memory here. I think I discarded a lot of this to make more room in my brain during the years that history pertaining to James didn't feel like it would be important to my future life. But something happened during this time wherein James and I discussed my job at Harvest Foods (Safeway) and he had told me he'd drop in and say "hi" on this one particular day.

Oh. My. Goodness.

Although I can't recall exactly how that came about, I do remember being extremely excited and nervous. Suddenly all of the "gross" stuff I'd thought about James when he was in a relationship with someone else seemed like it'd be sweet... you know, if I were on the receiving end of it. How great a boyfriend would he be?!

My co-worker and great friend Danielle shared my excitement with me, and kept an eagle eye on the door while I bagged my groceries. She kept telling me how awesome my hair looked, and generally being my hype man.

Finally, I registered the glint in her eyes and looked over my shoulder. There he was! He walked in, kind of looked around a moment, then before he saw me, a curly-haired blonde I'd never seen before trotted in, caught up with James, and took his hand in hers.

What?

Danielle looked almost as deflated as I felt.

Once again, this memory fades into obscurity. I'm sure James and I exchanged niceties. I was just stunned. I'd never seen that girl before, never heard that there was someone James was interested in. Where had she come from?

I know now.

Apparently, James was driving home from work one day and thought he saw someone he knew at a mailbox in his neighborhood. He waved at her, then realized it was not who he thought it was. It was a new person. This girl. And that's their meet cute. (Which, as I've stated, we did not have.)

I went back to Dungeons and Dragons one time. James's new girlfriend was there, sitting in his lap, as I remember. I couldn't after that. I was done.

Right before school started, my friend and I decided that senior year would be a cool time to join the band, in which neither of us had ever played. My friend had the advantage of being able to sight-read music and play a couple of instruments. I could read rhythm charts, so I ended up in auxiliary percussion.

We started practice during the summer. Long, hot mornings in the wide open practice field. The percussion section was fun, though, and I loved it. One particular break, we were standing in line for the water fountain when James, who was right behind me with his girlfriend, said to me, "Laura, I know it gets you all excited to see me so hot and sweaty like this. I get it." I cannot for the life of me explain why I had a double-edged response to this. It was half, "Eww, get over yourself + how can your girlfriend stand you" and half, "That guy has zero confidence issues. That's appealing."

Also, it was very clear that, whatever else he might have said or done, he treated his girlfriends with overt admiration and care. Um, he also did stupid stuff that got him suspended from school for days at a time, but I wasn't aware of those things until much, much later.

At some point I started dating... well, honestly, the first of two gay guys I dated that year. He definitely had some confidence issues, as a closeted man in 1989 small-town Arkansas likely would. But one time stands out. I think we might even have broken up by then. Whatever, we were all heading over to the football stadium for a game, and for whatever reason, the band bus wasn't available. They had a van for the bigger instruments, but told us all to get a ride with people who had cars. (I'd wrecked mine, so didn't.)

I ended up in my friend Tim's vehicle, with some other guy riding shotgun, and James and me in the back seat. It was a totally forgettable 4 minutes in the car, except for what happened when we got to the field.

I got out of the car and was hauling some gear to the bandstands when my boyfriend (wink wink) marched up to me, livid. He said, "You be careful around that James Gates. He only cares about one thing." Seriously, he was shaking. I will never understand that, but... he was kind of right.

So we graduated. We were good enough friends that my mom took a picture of him receiving his diploma, an honor reserved for only about a dozen of my closest buddies. The next fall, I headed off to college near Little Rock, and James went to Kansas. By the end of the semester, we both returned "home."

James's parents had moved, so he and a friend ended up living in a "swanky" bachelor pad near the fairgrounds in Fort Smith. I was going to the community college, and maybe he was, too. At some point, we ended up hanging out again. He was single, and I, once again, was VERY INTERESTED.

Interested enough to hang out at the aforementioned anti-frat-house and listen to a bunch of self-entertained young men recite "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" in its entirety. We also went to see "Dances with Wolves" at the theater (yes, first run; we are not young people) together. James complained afterwards about the inclusion of Kevin Costner butt with no balance of lady butt. At this point, you might be wondering WHY I was so interested. I can't explain it. There was a lot more to James than his juvenile male shtick, but for some reason, that WAS a part of it. I think it still is.

And then James decided to join the Navy. He was going to go to Colorado to be with his family for a bit first, then he was enlisting. I wanted one real live date before he left, so, in my characteristically understated way, I asked him out on a legitimate date... By drawing a short comic book called "Middle-Aged Deformed Kung-Fu Lizards," about some super anti-heroes who end up trapped in a book until they successfully convince James to go on a date with me. Because I like to play things cool.

It worked, though. He agreed. I don't remember this at all, but James said that I asked him to write down everything he'd never done, so I could plan something totally new for him. Not sure he ever completed that assignment, but what I picked was a day trip down to Hot Springs to go to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum, then lunch, then finishing off at the Midamerica Science Museum.

I picked James up and maybe 20 minutes into a three-hour drive, he fell asleep in my car. I was super irritated! Now I realize he might have been playing possum just to avoid anxiety over my frightening teenage driving habits.

Back in the day Midamerica Museum had an underground viewing room so you could see into the pond that butted up against the main building. As we stood watching the fish swim around, I told James, "When I was little, I'd stand here and pretend I lived in the water. I wanted to be able to breathe underwater so much." Quietly, James said, "I still do." I seriously felt like Cupid had just shot a freaking arrow into my heart and that I might drop dead right then and there.

Spoiler alert: I did not.

As an aside, if you ever have a chance to go to the Midamerica Science Museum, do! It's really fun. We should plan another trip there soon.

So, after a fun day out, I drove us back to northwest Arkansas. And that was it.

Except.

I'd left something at James's house. I'm thinking maybe it was lipstick? Something. Anyway. I needed to pick it up before James left town for good. The night I did so, I was going out with some girlfriends. I believe it was Danielle and Laurie. They sat in the car as I hopped out to meet James in the front yard. We said goodbye and hugged as my heart raced, hoping maybe, just maybe, he would kiss me goodbye. He did not.

When I got back into the car, Laurie said, "That was a very passionate hug." She was wrong, but it was a sweet consolation gesture.

James moved to Colorado a bit before Christmas 1991. I thought it'd be neat to make him a Christmas video, so a new friend I'd made in the local community theater and I drove all over Fort Smith and Van Buren for days, getting footage. In the end, my dad and I edited it using his work editing hardware, which allowed us to lay down a separate audio track, meaning the Christmas parades I filmed were played over Mannheim Steamroller music instead of just street noise. It sounds simple enough now, but at the time, I thought James would have to be super impressed by my technological prowess.

At the beginning of 1992, I moved to Fayetteville to attend the University of Arkansas. James headed off to basic training. We corresponded for some time. I would write him in the third person, as though the person about whom I was writing (myself) were a princess. I related everything as an allegory, rather than the actual boring recounting of going to classes, going to work, etc.

James told me that he would spend hours every night writing letters to people, after days full of working out and studying. He was only getting about two hours of sleep per night, according to his recollections.

Our correspondence died off in time, as we both got busy with separate lives. Somehow, though, over the years, we managed to keep up, even before the internet was much of a "thing." James got out of the Navy fairly quickly. If you know him, you know that the kind of structure and authoritarian nature of the military is just not a great fit for my husband.

The next time we really connected, he was living in Stillwater, Oklahoma, and I was in Las Vegas. As we exchanged a couple of letters, I met D's dad. I wrote James: "To be perfectly honest, I got in touch with you to see if the time was right for us to try to get together. But now I've met someone and we're engaged." James's characteristic response to that news was, "That's nice. But what does your engagement have to do with us?" It was comforting to know that his charm had remained so consistent across the span of time.

We still managed to keep up, exchanging updates every few years, until we connected on Facebook in maybe 2009 or so. James was never extremely active on Facebook, but I caught him online every once in a while, and we chatted. After my divorce in 2011, we started talking a lot. For once, I wasn't interested in him romantically. We were both trying to date people, and we'd commiserate about the frustrating stuff.

In October 2011, I went up to Tulsa for the Oklahoma Sugar Arts Festival and saw James at a contra dance to which he'd invited me. He was there with a girl he was dating, and I didn't realize it at the time, but they were in the process of breaking up. It was the first time I'd seen James in person in twenty years. He hardly looked different; his hair was longer, but that was about it.

In time, I learned that James and this girl weren't seeing each other anymore. He seemed a little less communicative than usual, so a couple of times, I invited him to come down to Dallas on one of the weekends I didn't have D. On one of those occasions, he said, "That sounds like fun. A lot more fun than watching my dad die."

James had gotten laid off of his job just in time for his family to contact him and tell him that his dad was very ill and he needed to get there as soon as possible. James spent about six weeks in a hotel with his stepmom as his father received whatever care they were able to administer, then he passed away.

I agonized over attending the funeral. I tried to figure out a way to make it work. I calculated driving up to Kansas the day of the funeral and driving back immediately afterward. I couldn't make it work.

Then James disappeared.

Months later, I happened to see him online when I was down in Temple for an insurance thing. I told him I'd be home over the weekend and asked if he wanted to visit. He said he had no means to get there, so I offered to come see him. I asked him his address. He wrote back something to the extent of "Listen, I wish I could be what you need for me to be right now, but I can't." I said, "I'm coming to Tulsa. You can send me your address, if you want." For some reason, that broke through some wall, and he said, "I suppose I could hock a guitar for gas money." I told him no need; I'd just head up to Tulsa after driving home, feeding the cats, and repacking.

I didn't actually get a response from him until after I'd gotten home, regrouped, and headed north supposing I could enjoy the city if I didn't hear back from him. I did. He warned me to stay in my car until I saw him, because he lived in a dangerous apartment complex. He also warned me that his place looked like a train hit both a bookstore and a liquor store. He wasn't kidding.

My first thought, when I saw James come around the corner of the building was, "He looks like a little kid." He'd lost a significant amount of weight since I'd seen him the previous year. I'd been worried that James was depressed, and I think he was. But he genuinely likes a "pleasantly" cluttered space. His apartment was that on steroids. Plus, his complex had bedbugs. And roaches. And... you get the idea. I had no idea how to make sure he was going to take better care of himself.

We went out to dinner to catch up. The next day, James took me to the Philbrook Museum of Art, where we rescued a bright blue and green lizard. Then we went to the grocery store and I bought stuff to make beef and broccoli, brownies, and several other dishes he could freeze to eat later.

While we cooked (at my hotel, as his counters were covered with dishes, boxes, paperwork, etc.), we showed each other videos that were meaningful to us. We talked about politics. About religion. About friends. About what we were doing.

It was a great weekend, and I returned home hopeful that he'd been cheered up at least a little bit. For once, I wasn't hoping anything. I hadn't had ulterior motives in visiting. I had no expectations. But James was already messaging me when I returned. He knew I was planning to move to Austin and wanted to see me again before I left, if that wasn't too much to ask.

And, I don't know, we ended up falling in love.

There was a lot more to it. Like, I helped hook him up with a job in Dallas, and he moved there several weeks before I moved to Austin. Yes, I could have changed my plans. But I'd learned from a previous experience not to change my life's trajectory because of a new relationship, no matter how promising it seemed.

Then I moved to Austin while he worked in Dallas, from August until February. The long distance thing sucked. But when he moved to Austin and got a job here, it was worse. At least we'd spent weekends together when we were in separate towns. Once he lived in town ,we'd manage an hour or two here and there, but he was otherwise exhausted from the new grind, or I had things going on with D.

It was wearing on me and putting strain on our relationship when one night in the middle of March, James had come over for dinner and said, "I think we should get married on April 1. That seems appropriate."

The rest, as they say, is history.

I'm going to tell you the truth: James and I were both super hot messes when we got together. We were both 40ish, but when I think back to some of the things we were doing or thinking or saying to each other, I feel like we were still babies. The fact is, we were both still reeling from a lot of emotional damage. We probably should have waited longer before pursuing a relationship.

On the other hand, we've both been very, very good for each other. I think we balance each other out in so many ways. I've never been as content, hopeful, and secure with myself and my life as I am with James. I think he gets something good out of this, too... Like the fact that I check the mail and make sure bills get paid and minutiae like that.

James has also made me a better parent, also because of the balancing factor. He's chill and has perspective and patience when I'm freaking out. He also provides for us so I can stay home with both kiddos, even the one who doesn't really need me too much anymore (sniff... but not really).

I have told James, and continue to believe, that whatever I might have fantasized being in a relationship with him might be like, the reality has surpassed it.

A funny side product of this is that things I used to LLLLUUUUUHHHHHHHHVVVVVVE, I now still enjoy, but not nearly as much, because my actual life is so enjoyable. Examples: Back when Rockapella was verboten (don't ask; I couldn't explain it), I extracted so much happiness from their music and seeing them perform. When they came to Austin a few years ago, James and D went with me to the concert. And it was so good. But it wasn't the super-bright mark in a pretty dark existence that it had been in the past.

Another one: We just got back from vacation, and we had a lot of fun and delicious meals while we were there. In the past, I would have poured over menus ahead of the trip, and decided on what to order long in advance. I deprived myself of so many foods that I loved, except on special occasions, that I was just obsessed with meal planning, especially on vacation. Now, I eat what I want when I want whenever it's available. So I had fun getting "free" food on vacation, and things I don't normally eat because we don't eat out a whole lot. But it wasn't the luxurious break from a monotonous relationship with food that I've had in the past.

This is, of course, a vast improvement over what my life was before. When your life is so pleasant that it's hard to make it MORE pleasant, that's pretty amazing. And James has given me that. Finally. (!!!!)