When I first started dating the David who became my Sweet Boy, I was also dating another guy that I had met in a local watering hole. I met him there on an evening that I had gone in after work with a friend, for the purposes of drinking whiskey and lamenting the general state of affairs of my miserable love life. I wasn’t wearing any make-up and I was exhausted. Bek was smoking then, and we took the opportunity to smoke profusely with our whiskey, in the back courtyard of the bar.
As often happens in this location, we got to chatting with the other people who were sitting back there. One of them, was this guy, Chase. Turns out, he is an artist and while we were there he drew me a picture of hands holding a giant cherry, and called it Cherries for Maggie, and autographed it with his phone number and website. I was totally charmed by this and sent him an e-mail and he replied and asked me out.
2 Days later, I met David.
I had plans to meet up with Chase, but he had a family member come in to town unexpectedly and he had to cancel.
Then, I had a perfect dream date with David. He took me for a picnic by the lake in our neighborhood. He prepared and brought everything. And the thing that pierced my heart comletely with cupid’s arrow was this: he brought cherries, which he had known I was terrifically fond of. But he pitted them.
A few days later, I had another date with Chase. Turns out, he also had planned for a picnic. But he hadn’t prepared anything. We went to a coffee shop to get sandwhiches, which he didn’t pay for, because he had a long-standing credit for building something for them. And he didn’t bring any wine, or a corkscrew. So we went to the liquor store to get wine and since it had to have a screw top, our options were limited. Because he’d just told me this whole story about having lost $200 in cash and how despondent he was about it, I paid for the over priced screw top wine. And then the park he had thought to go to was closed after sunset. We walked a goodly ways (in cute date shoes) to a different park. Almost immediately, I was attacked by viscious mosquitos. We left and went over to his apartment, which was nearby. He showed me his paintings, including one of my pant cuffs and shoes from the night we met.
Then I had another date with David. The fruit tarts in the rose garden date.
And then Chase convinced me to let him give me a ride home from work one night. Since he wasn’t making ends meet as an artist, he also did some contracting/construction work and happened to be in the city that week. Although I thought it was absurd to try to drive into the Financial District to come get me, he was insistent. And I get it. He was making a real effort to try with me. And while the goofiness of crushing on someone can make you retarded, sometimes it just seems like too much. But he insisted that he really wanted to do this, so I agreed. As planned, I met him in Union Square and then we walked over to where his truck was. And by was, I mean that it was there, but then it wasn’t. He insisted that he had a construction permit on his car, which meant that he could park in loading zones. I’m sure this is true, except for when the signs said you couldn’t do it between 4 and 6, which happened to be the exact window we were in. After much confusion, he finally called in to the city and got confirmation that he had been towed.
Sigh. sigh. sigh. I clearly remember thinking then “if I were with David right now, this never would have happened.”
It seemed to heartless to just leave him there to catch my bus home, so I walked with him to the city towing site in SOMA where he realized that he didn’t have a credit card or a way to pay the fee to get the truck out. Pity made me want to whip out my credit card to just make the awfulness go away, but I didn’t. He called a cousin who came down and paid the ticket. Finally, I got the privilege of being driven home.
I think he sent me an e-mail after that saying that I should get in touch if I had time to meet up again, but that was the last I saw of him.
margaret edith 