 | A WRITER'S WIT |
NOTE: I wrote this post a year ago. For reasons I can't recall I decided not to put it up. Today Ken and I celebrate our forty-first anniversary together, and I share last year's post belatedly!
Ken and I met forty years ago, in 1976, at a rather notorious bar, late at night on Valentine's Day. Located off Marshall, David’s Warehouse of Lubbock, Texas, was a foreboding place, like a remote outpost of a foreign land. Eerie fluorescents contributed to an apprehensiveness, almost a fear, and patrons' cars were clumped close like horses with their reins loosely tied around a hitching post. Inside, amid the warmth and the steady thump of disco music someone introduced us. Ken asserts that I had been snubbing him for weeks. I maintain that I was just shy. In those days I felt compelled to pound down three beers at my apartment before heading out to face the meat rack at David's.
Well, we now talk as little about that as possible—just what followed. Seeing each other every day—Ken would bring little gifts like tiny potted cacti—we became acquainted rather quickly, and by June made the decision to move in together. We had an open house, and a few of the items we received—some dessert plates and four blue plastic glasses—are still part of our daily use.
Not long after that we made the trip to Kansas and Missouri and Michigan, to introduce our newly formed union to, respectively, my family, Ken's family, and friends where he’d taught in Kalamazoo. It was like a honeymoon. We even took a mini-cruise by placing our yellow Datsun on a ferry that transported us from northern Michigan to Green Bay, a pleasant four-hour voyage.
Well, we now talk as little about that as possible—just what followed. Seeing each other every day—Ken would bring little gifts like tiny potted cacti—we became acquainted rather quickly, and by June made the decision to move in together. We had an open house, and a few of the items we received—some dessert plates and four blue plastic glasses—are still part of our daily use.
Not long after that we made the trip to Kansas and Missouri and Michigan, to introduce our newly formed union to, respectively, my family, Ken's family, and friends where he’d taught in Kalamazoo. It was like a honeymoon. We even took a mini-cruise by placing our yellow Datsun on a ferry that transported us from northern Michigan to Green Bay, a pleasant four-hour voyage.
Our first seven years were the most difficult. It was the 1970s! Open Marriage, the Sexual Revolution, and Gay Liberation all conspired to make us think we could have it all—that is, have every man we saw, plus the one at home. AIDS, whose clutches we were fortunate enough to escape (don’t think that we don’t still suffer some survivor’s guilt), made us stop and think. Once we committed only to one another, what, I suppose, history had been trying to tell us, we became much closer, committed.
In 1986, for our tenth anniversary, we threw a party. Ken gave me a ring with a fire agate as the setting. Funny story: years after his Grandfather Dixon died, Ken watched as his Grandmother cleaned out a drawer. He eyed his grandfather's gold dental work and asked if he could have it. His grandmother was more than glad to be rid of a ghost's smile. Prior to our special day he asked a jeweler friend to shape the gold into a ring. In the future, whenever Ken's relatives would comment on my beautiful ring, he and I would exchange winks. I even think you could hear his grandfather chuckle. In a similar vein, the ring I presented to Ken was made, in part, from my discarded wedding ring.
In 1986, for our tenth anniversary, we threw a party. Ken gave me a ring with a fire agate as the setting. Funny story: years after his Grandfather Dixon died, Ken watched as his Grandmother cleaned out a drawer. He eyed his grandfather's gold dental work and asked if he could have it. His grandmother was more than glad to be rid of a ghost's smile. Prior to our special day he asked a jeweler friend to shape the gold into a ring. In the future, whenever Ken's relatives would comment on my beautiful ring, he and I would exchange winks. I even think you could hear his grandfather chuckle. In a similar vein, the ring I presented to Ken was made, in part, from my discarded wedding ring.
BELOW: Left, the ring Ken gave me and his Kappa Alpha frat pin. Right, the ring I later gave Ken and my Phi Mu Alpha pin. We occasionally wear the pins on a night out, our little joke.
In 1996 we celebrated our twentieth anniversary with a Hawaiian cruise. The eight-day voyage was only marred by the day on which we left Honolulu, the very morning the bomb went off in Atlanta. At the airport, everyone’s luggage was dump-searched, and we arrived home exhausted. What survives, however, are great memories of cruising the peaceful Pacific.
Having never traveled much by train, we celebrated our thirtieth in 2006 by taking Amtrak from Fort Worth to New York, by way of Chicago. During the forty-eight-hour trip in First Class, we reminisced about our first thirty years, some of the same things we’d always reminisced about when we got sentimental: our beginning at a tawdry bar in north Lubbock. But what else? Art. Music. Literature. Film. Gossip. Very little ever seemed out of range for our discussions. And as with all good friends, we daily seem to pick up where we left off last time we talked.
So here we are again, Sunday night, February 14, 2016—our fortieth anniversary, the same night of the year as always. We usually avoid eating out—selecting an adjacent evening—not finding it very festive to celebrate such a special day with the hoi polloi and their sentimental frills like chocolates and roses. That’s just not us. I take charge of glasses. Oh, get the doorbell, would you. It is our pizza! Then an episode of Downton Abbey. Later, we raise our glasses to the next ten years, and the next! We, same as Mr. Milne, can hope, can’t we!
BELOW would appear some photos from our fortieth-anniversary trip, a Caribbean cruise to Aruba, Panama, Columbia, Costa Rica, and the Caymans . . . ONLY WE NEVER GOT TO GO!
Due to a health crisis in our duo, we were forced to cancel our October trip at the last minute. When Ken would share with the nurses and doctors at University Medical Center that we were to have celebrated our fortieth on the cruise, most emitted an authentic "Awww." Gee, how the world has changed. Forty years ago we wouldn't have even shared such information with strangers, especially those holding needles. Since our travel insurance check arrived, we are determined to go SOMEWHERE for our forty-first year. Now the fun comes in deciding WHERE?
NEXT TIME: My Book World
Due to a health crisis in our duo, we were forced to cancel our October trip at the last minute. When Ken would share with the nurses and doctors at University Medical Center that we were to have celebrated our fortieth on the cruise, most emitted an authentic "Awww." Gee, how the world has changed. Forty years ago we wouldn't have even shared such information with strangers, especially those holding needles. Since our travel insurance check arrived, we are determined to go SOMEWHERE for our forty-first year. Now the fun comes in deciding WHERE?
NEXT TIME: My Book World
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