It’s 1987. I’m nineteen years old, and sitting at a dive bar (yes, I looked older than I was) commonly frequented by the students of a nearby art school. I hadn’t really blossomed into a full-blown bar slut yet, but I had managed to achieve just enough arrogance to sit at the bar, drinking my beer, and writing poetry. Alone.
Charlie, at 25 years old, was also at the bar, with a good buddy who’d had the very rare luck (for him) to hook up with a girl. So while Charlie’s buddy swapped spit with this girl, Charlie’s eye roved around the bar and alighted on the chick writing at the bar.
Not too long before this point, maybe a year, Charlie had discovered his own inner writer. He was visiting a friend in NYC and got stuck on the toilet without toilet paper, and while his friend ran to the store to get some, he began reading Post Office by Charles Bukowski. Charlie was immediately smitten by Bukowski’s drunken and witty observations, and began reading Bukowski's poetry. Pretty soon Charlie found his head full of his own poetic thoughts, and began writing poetry.
Taking the bull by the horns, he picked up a copy of the Poet’s Market and found four magazines to send poems to. He only had a handful of poems at this point, and sent the same four poems to each journal. Each journal accepted a different poem. All four were published. Flush with this success, Charlie embarked on the writer’s life, starting in that dive bar.
Charlie came across the bar, introduced himself to me, and we began chatting. What he didn’t remember, and I did, is that we had been briefly introduced a week or so before by one of my roommates. That night, he had just returned from seeing the movie Barfly (which was written by Bukowski) and was too busy trying to figure out how to live the life represented in the movie to notice me.
But that night at the bar, we got to talking. The more we drank, the more we talked. Charlie walked me to the bus stop when it was time to leave, and asked if he could call me. Drunk and giddy, and more than a tad star struck (a published poet!) I told him he could.
Surprisingly enough (to me) he did call. We met up at the bar a couple more times, and met up at some parties. We even made out a few times; well, at least twice, that we remember. He remembers one time, and I remember the other (black out drinkers, unite!). Once time at that same bar (where I lived for the next seven or eight years), he pulled me into the booth he was in and said, dramatically, “Kiss me!” What’s a girl to do? He has no memory of that. The other occasion was at a party at my house—the best party I ever threw (so many people came that I ran out of beer—two kegs!!! by midnight). Charlie dragged me outside, so I’m told, and made out with me against a wall while my high school boyfriend (who happened to be visiting) was passed out in a car facing us.
But then we finally, finally, managed to go out on a date.
I’m proud to say that I have been on exactly two dates in my whole life. Once with a guy I met through a personal ad (eek, he was scary) and once with Charlie. Every other guy I was with, in the short or long term, was a bar hook-up.
Anyway, Charlie came to my office (I was a receptionist at a travel agency) and took me to lunch. We had Chinese.
It was awful.
We couldn’t figure out what to talk about without booze. I felt like a freak in my little business dress, and he didn’t know what to think. It was just terribly awkward.
So we never closed the deal. After that date, we cooled off, although we still ran into each other quite often at the bar. Over the next year or two, I managed to grow into my role as a bar whore, and Charlie claims I used to grant him brief “audiences” until someone else I wanted to talk to came along. I don’t really remember, although I did consider myself queen of the bar. He came to the bar with other women, one of whom he eventually married, both of which referred to me as “that woman.” I left the bar with boy after boy, ending up in brief and completely sad and dysfunctional relationships.
There was the guy that was apparently a drug addict, and possibly gay (whether or not it was gay by choice or as an avenue to drugs, I don’t know) who called me “cecaLEE” and didn’t have all his teeth (he eventually died from AIDS). There was the big, dumb blond guy from New Jersey who got really jealous and once tried to shake my head off my shoulders (unfortunately for him, he did this at MY bar). There was the hot Italian guy who climbed up the front of my house and serenaded me one night, then took me to the bar the next night and left with another woman (yeah, and I took him back a few months later). There were others—one night stands with various idiots—and then I finally met the guy I thought I could have a real relationship with. We’ll call him Dick—since his first name was Richard (although he actually went by an abbreviation of his last name).
Dick first slept with a girlfriend of mine, but she didn’t really like him (I think—sadly, I was that kind of girl—one who should have had a t-shirt that said “Hold my purse while I kiss your boyfriend”). He and I started chatting a lot at the bar, and eventually went home together. For six months we did this—I didn’t even have his phone number—until I finally, at the advice of my girlfriends, told him I was seeing other people. He said that was fine, but as soon as I actually did go out with someone (a crazy black guy with a Mohawk who slept in a tent inside his apartment), Dick wouldn’t leave me alone. Soon, I not only had his phone number, I’d been to his house (he still lived with his parents—oh lordy, I should have known better) and had met his mother. It seemed like the next thing to do was have him move in with me.
We lived together for three years, even moving to a ranch house on 1.5 acres of land in New Jersey, until the day I came home from work and found out we’d been robbed. After a few frantic moments, I began to realize that only his stuff was gone, and found, written on the back of an envelope, the following: “Cec, I thought about our relationship, and moved—Dick.” We’d been fighting lately, and I’d asked him, that morning, to really think about what he wanted from our relationship.
Meanwhile, Charlie had gotten married. About the time that Dick and I got together, Charlie went with his then-girlfriend to a holiday party at her office (also used to be his office, it’s where they’d met) and they both got pretty drunk. Charlie had left the job to become a freelancer, but this left him without benefits. Jokingly, his girlfriend suggested that they should get married so he could have her benefits. Someone at the table overheard them, and got up and yelled, “Hey, these two are getting married!” Rather than contradict him, they went along with it, and before Charlie knew it, she’d told her parents and big checks were arriving so he decided to go along with it.
Unfortunately, it became clear, at least to Charlie, that the marriage wasn't working out for him. He tried to treat that by drinking even more, but eventually they ended up in counseling, and soon separated. I saw him often during this time, although he spent much of his time going to a go-go (it really was a go-go, more than a strip club). They had just moved back in together when Dick dumped me.
That was a crazy summer. I’d stopped writing when I was with Dick (because he told me I sucked, and I—naturally--believed him) and I managed to find my voice and start putting pen to paper again. This was in between my flurry of one-night stands and a brief period where I dated two guys at once (one was a teeny guy with beautiful hair that I was afraid I’d hurt during sex, and the other a rather psycho limo driver). Then I began seeing a good friend, also a writer. And I got my first tattoo. I was 23.
It was the night I got that first tattoo that I ended up at a party at Charlie’s house. Charlie and I got to talking about writing again. I told him about the guy I was seeing, and he told me about another friend of his who was writing a lot. We considered starting a writers group, and after I left the party, Charlie apparently considered jumping out the 14th floor window. He listened to jazz instead.
Soon after, fate intervened.
One late afternoon, as Charlie was walking home, a guy pulled a knife on him and tried to rob him. Charlie told him he didn’t have any money, and the guy looked like he was going to stab him, but Charlie managed to pull away and duck (conveniently) into the bar. Shaking, he managed to convince the bartender to give him a drink on credit, and told her what had happened. She suggested he go home and calm down, and he did. He was surprised to find out (window jumping not withstanding) that he didn't want to die. Back at the bar later that night, he found himself evaluating his life. While speaking with a friend, he realized that he didn’t love his wife anymore, and the friend said something insightful and supportive along the lines of “No shit.” He decided to sleep on this realization, and discuss it further with friends he was planning to meet for breakfast. Friends that cancelled breakfast at the last minute (this is a crucial detail, people).
That same morning, I awoke in a wonderful mood. I finally felt like I’d shaken off the grief of Dick’s leaving, and was ready to start fresh. I called some friends, and we all decided to go get lox and bagels for breakfast at the deli right next to Charlie’s apartment building.
You can guess the next thing, right?
We ran into Charlie, who was also feeling rather giddy after his brush with death the night before, and lacking breakfast companions. So we invited him to join us for breakfast. I’m not sure exactly when we fell in love; for him, it might have been while he watched me re-apply my lipstick after eating. For me, it might have been while I was laughing at his stories.
My friend and I had planned to go shopping after breakfast, at a mall, and Charlie tagged along (hello!). We hung out all day, and then he agreed to meet us (my friend, her boyfriend, and me) that night at a club to hear some music. After just a couple of hours apart, I was so happy to see Charlie that I rushed right past the bouncer at the club (forgetting to pay my cover) to greet him.
I don’t remember anything about the music that night, I just remember Charlie’s bright eyes watching my face while I spoke. Unlike Dick, and most of the others, he listened to me.
My friends went home, and Charlie and I went to the bar, and then it was closing time, and we bought a six-pack and went up to his apartment. Conveniently, his wife was out of town (um, for me, not really for her). After about a thirty-minute pretense, we attacked each other. I wouldn’t sleep with him (I mean, I had SOME standards, and he WAS married) but we made out until 6am. While I was trying to leave, he pushed me up against the wall, where my leather coat (with fringe!) left some lovely scuffmarks. It was all very heady and romantic.
The next day I didn’t know what to think. He was married, for god’s sake! I told the guy I was seeing that I thought I’d fallen in love—you know, with someone else. He took it, uh, well, I think (we’re still friends). Charlie woke up and tried to clean off the scuffmarks.
When his wife got home Sunday, she found my scarf (no, I DID NOT leave it on purpose, please allow me to remind you of how much drinking was involved). Charlie made up a story about a group of people coming over, and then he told her he didn’t want to be married to her anymore. She, also, took it well (Charlie referred to the next few weeks as the “carnival of grief”).
The next day, while I was in surgery at work (I was a vet tech by this point) I glanced up at the lobby monitor and saw Charlie standing in the lobby. The front desk receptionist came back into surgery and told me, “There’s a beautiful man out front with wolf eyes that wants to speak with you.” Charlie's eyes are incredibly--super super pale blue, they pierce right through you. Literally shaking all over, I went out to the lobby. I grabbed my cigarettes, and we went outside.
Charlie said, “What if I told you I’m leaving my wife?”
I said (very dramatically), “I don’t want to know. I’m not going to be the other woman. If you really leave her, you can come find me, but I don’t want to see you until then.”
He solemnly agreed.
That night, or the next night, we ran into each other at the bar. While I kept seeing the other guy, there were still many, many make out sessions in my car with Charlie. One of those nights he said the following to me:
"You know, I could leave right now, walk out into the street and get hit by a bus and it would be ok. I'd cross that great river, get to the other side, and say to everyone else there, you've all wasted your life checking dixie cups* for leaks, but me--me--I kissed Cecily."
Again, what's a girl to do?
Charlie got his own apartment, I broke it off with the other guy, and Charlie and I finally closed the deal. It was the first time in many years that I’d waited any length of time to be with a man, and boy oh boy, it was worth the wait!
There has never, never been a moment in the last twelve years (twelve! years!) when I haven’t known, beyond any doubt, that Charlie is the man for me. We’ve been through a lot: three years into our relationship, I fell into drugs, and we both stumbled into recovery. Ten months later, we married. Five years later, we faced infertility.
But here we are, eight years into our marriage, still in love, still happy, and—now--finally pregnant. It’s clear that I am the luckiest woman in the world.
Tomorrow night, we’re going to enjoy a birthday present given to Charlie (by my best friend) and eat dinner on a train pulled by a steam engine. It might not be the way I would have envisioned us celebrating, twelve years ago, but it fits us perfectly now. We’ve grown up together, somehow, without ever growing apart. I feel so blessed.
So Happy Anniversary, Charlie. I love you more than I can say.
And that’s the story, people. I’m sticking to it.
*The dixie cups are mentioned specifically because several member of Charlie's family did work at the dixie cup plant checking the cups for leaks.
