(no subject)
When I left this story last, my buddy Kevin and I had just left Mumm Winery in Napa, California. I now had a bottle of fancy champagne and a diamond ring, with no real plan of how I was going to Lesley to marry me. The morning, day, and afternoon had almost happened is a daze. Maybe daze isn’t quite the correct way to describe it. I had been conscious and clear almost all day. Clear minded to such an extreme I can barely remember the feeling. There must have been so much adrenaline running through my body that you could have powered the entire Bay Area on the energy. But that was neither here nor there. We were on our way back to Sacramento, Kevin with his wedding bubbly, and I with my engagement champagne. The wine and the precious, as well.
Kevin couldn’t take it anymore. He sparked up his fully loaded pot pipe, and I held my breath as well as I could, not wanting any sort of contact high to affect my ability to make decisions. As I stated in a previous part of this story, I was set on proposing that night. There was no way I was going to be able to wait longer than a week to do this, and as it was Monday, there wouldn’t be anything more appropriate about a Thursday than there would be about a Monday, so why not?
Now I was getting a little crazy. How should I do it? Take her out to dinner? Where should we go? Somewhere new? Somewhere familiar? Somewhere fancy? Some where more relaxed? Maybe we shouldn’t go to dinner? I mean, do I do it at the restaurant, or at home? Should I do it before we go out or after? If I wait to long, will she be to tired to humor my probable stammering? I was naturally freaking out just a touch. After all, I’d never been in this position before. I was even considering not doing that night, but knew that I couldn’t wait. I called Patrick, the bartender at out favorite restaurant, Lucca, to see if he’d be working. He was not. I’d forgotten about some drama that disallowed his from working Monday nights. He told me that Micah, one of the other bartenders we liked was suppose to be scheduled. My whole intention was to bring the champagne by there before we went out, to have it chilling for when we arrived. Not really a part of some huge greater scheme, I was just sort of making it up as I went along. Okay, Micah would work well enough, I thought. I pulled out the ring for another peak, and twisted it to capture the light for a twinkle.
We braved our way through rush hour traffic for the next hour and a half back to Sac. I had called Lesley along the way to invite her out to dinner. I told her to dress up. It seemed a bit odd to ask her out on a Monday to a fancier place, but she went with it. I think she thought I had felt guilty about leaving her to do chores all day by herself. I didn’t really. I figured if she was anyway, she’d hopefully forgive before the night was through. Whatever got her to dress up was fine with me. As we rolled up J street ( yes, I get it, “rolled up J”, but there was no pun intended, it’s just the street Lucca is on), I had Kevin pull over so I could deliver the champagne to Micah. I walked through the front door to learn that Micah was not there, and that instead some new guy was on the schedule. There was no way I was leaving such an important chore to a stranger. Shit, I thought. I guess I’m proposing before we go out. I hadn’t made up my mind, anyway.
It was only another half a mile until home. Kevin asked to come in to use the restroom. Could I say no after what he had helped me with? As he made his way to the back bathroom of the apartment, I was shoved the champagne in the freezer while yelling my hello to Lesley. I shook Kevin’s hands good-by, and looked around the front room. I needed to get ready to go out to dinner as well, and needed a place to hide the ring where she wouldn’t find it, give me easy access to it, and it needed to happen in about twenty seconds as she was beginning to make her way out to greet me with a kiss, probably. I ran to the liquor cabinet to throw it in there, thinking she’ll never look in there. I opened to cabinet to find all the booze was gone, and had been replaced with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and a bunch or other spices. One of the chores she had said she was going to do was rearrange the location of stuff around the kitchen. I realized this all in about two seconds. Now here’s the funny part, she’s got about as much reason to look in the spice cabinet as she does the liquor cabinet, but I thought, I can’t put this in there. She might find it! As I was drawing all these illogical conclusions, I heard her foot steps clicking down the hallway. Now, as some of you know, and for the uninitiated, there are two boxes that expensive rings come in: the flip one that displays the jewelry, and the outer box that holds the flip box. I withdrew the flip box from the outer box, stuffed the flip box into my pocket, and tossed the outer box under the kitchen sink behind all the cleaning supplies. She’s been doing that all day, and won’t want to look in there must have been my thoughts. She walked into the kitchen. We kissed, and she asked me how my day was. I told her it was fun hanging out with Kevin one last time before he was married. I apologized for taking all day and explained that one of the “chores” was going to Napa to pick up champagne for his wedding, and that’s why we were back so late. She told me not to worry about it.
We got back to getting ready for dinner. I now was totally committed to asking her before we went out. I wasn’t even certain that we’d be going out after I proposed. My nerves had settled. I was still excited, but it was a more romantic feeling. I really didn’t have much to do to get ready. Normally, I take a shower, but I had other last minute “plans” to make. I changed into some going out clothes, spritzed on some cologne, and deftly moved the precious box from the pocket of the old clothes to the ones I was wearing. She was putting the finishing touches of make-up on. I ran around the house lighting every candle I could find. I guessed that would create some ambiance. Now for some music. Something romantic. Had this been planned better, I would have selected “At Last” by Etta James, as that has been our song for each other. But that was on one of her MP3 CDs and I didn’t now which one. Besides, I wasn’t even thinking that far in advance. Damn Harry Potter! I started scanning our CD rack. I went with “Something”, by The Beatles. Not that it had any special significance, at least not yet, but our CDs are alphabetized and The Beatles was better than Beck or The Beastie Boys. So I queued up the song, and waited for her to walk down the hall. I checked my pocket one last time to make sure the ring was there, and decided to move it to my back pocket so I could hold her close without her feeling it in my front pocket.
She came out, and I pressed play on the music player. George Harrison’s famous riff came in starting off the song. I pulled her in for some slow dancing.
“You’re feeling romantic, aren’t you?” She questioned, but didn’t seem to mind. To be honest, I might not get the exact words that were said that night, but the spirit will be true.
“I guess I am.” I pulled her closer, kissing her lightly.
“What’s the occasion?”
“Oh, I don’t know”, I’m such a liar. I went on to tell her how much I loved her, and she told me that she loved me.
“Baby”, I continued, “I can’t imagine my life without you. I consider myself the luckiest man alive.” All these words sound like such a cliché when you’re not in the moment, but when you’re right there, caught up in it, they are the only truth you know. Even now I don’t like to say that they are cliché, it’s just that I wish I could invent words not yet thought of to express in original terms the deepness of my love for her, but I can’t. So I went with words already said by others who know what I feel. Does that sound sappy? What does it ultimately matter? Love maybe sappy sweet, but I’ll take it every day of the week.
Every time I said something romantic to her, she would echo the words back to me, making me even a touch more emotional because I knew what was coming. She also kept trying to put her hands on my butt. I kept having to push her hands away so she wouldn’t feel the box. After about three or four times of having to dance out of her hands, I had to go for the next move. I descended to one knee, the music began that crescendo where the cymbals roll, and the words go, You’re asking my will my love grow…She gasped as I opened the box.
“Lesley. Will you marry me?”
“Yes!” I barely managed to ask the whole question before she gave her answer. She was crying, I was crying, but smiling to. She fumbled her rings off her left hand to make room for the one I was giving to her. I placed it on her finger, effortlessly. I had guessed at what size her fingers were at Jewelry Mart, and had been correct. We hugged, and kissed, and hugged some more. I think we finished the song that way. We both were a tad snot nosed by this point due to the happy tears. (might I add that I’m getting a bit choked up as I remember the night right now. I’m not always that great of a writer so if I’m not capturing the essence of the moment, too bad. It’s working for me) I confessed to her why I wouldn’t let her touch my ass a minute ago, and we had a great laugh over it.
Now I was feeling as giddy as I ever have in my life. I took the champagne out of the freezer, telling her that Kevin really did pick up some champagne, but that I got some too. In fact, as we toasted our engagement, I told of the whole days adventure. The excuse I needed to get away that day. Kevin being late, and Jasmine being mad at him. I told her of Jewelry Mart, and the bar there. I told her about the stupidity of Cingular phone operators, and the rigidness of Mumm policies. I told her about my plan for Lucca, and how it fell through. I told her how I had planned on asking her Friday, but that Harry Potter had foiled it. We drank champagne, and laughed, and kissed. And now she had become the Golem as she continued to look at her ring and tell me how beautiful it was.
Her makeup had been kind of screwed up by the tears, and we were no longer in any mood to go out to dinner, but we had to eat. So we decided on bringing some pizza home. We drove over to Zelda’s Pizza, and sat at the bar waiting for our to go order. We held each other up as we leaned on each other, trying to get as close together as possible. As we talked all googly pooh to each other, I saw the bartender woman roll her eyes. I started to explain why we were acting so goofy when she saw the ring. She congratulated us, but I could tell that she thought it was really strange that we would eat pizza on our engagement night. Why not? It’s us. We didn’t want to be out in public anymore anyway. We wanted to be home. I decided she was just jealous.
At home, we drank more wine, ate our pizza, and continued to gaze at each other lovingly. It really is a drunken feeling to experience that much love in such short moment, and really the best feeling I’ve ever had. I get it again just remembering it. I think that’s why I wanted to write this down. I guess so I can go back and read it whenever I want to re-live. Not that I’d have to. But it feels really good to write it. I don’t know why, and I don’t really have to. We stayed up late, and slept in a bit later than usual too. Not that we really slept too much. That kind of excitement make sleep totally unnecessary.
The next morning, we went for coffee at Starbucks before she left for work. With our macchiatos in hand she started up the engine of her Escort. The radio had been left on the oldies station, and as if God was watching this movie unfold, the beginning of the Beach Boys song came on. “Wouldn’t it be nice if we were older, then we wouldn’t have to wait so long…” We both looked at each other, realizing simultaneously the serendipity in the moment, and laughed a really dorky laugh. And we didn’t dare change the radio station. She dropped me off at home, and we kissed and spoke of our love one last time before she left for work. Wow.
Wouldn't it be nice if we were older
Then we wouldn't have to wait so long
And wouldn't it be nice to live together
In the kind of world where we belong
You know its gonna make it that much better
When we can say goodnight and stay together
Wouldn't it be nice if we could wake up
In the morning when the day is new
And after having spent the day together
Hold each other close the whole night through
The happy times together we've been spending
I wish that every kiss was never ending
Oh Wouldn't it be nice
Maybe if we think and wish and hope and pray it might come true (run, run, run)
Baby then there wouldn't be a single thing we couldn't do
We could be married (we could be married)
And then we'd be happy (then we'd be happy)
Wouldn't it be nice (ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba)
You know it seems the more we talk about it
It only makes it worse to live without it
But lets talk about it
Oh, wouldn't it be nice
good night my baby
sleep tight my baby
good night my baby
sleep tight my baby
good night my baby
sleep tight my baby
good night my baby
sleep tight my baby