My fingers went black and numb thumbing through telephone pages looking for her number, the number I failed to get when I first saw her those many years during the summer before my junior year in college. I was in a special program in Washington, D.C., living and taking classes at Georgetown University and interning at a small newsletter. I was enjoying myself, basking in the heady world of D.C., the political version of Hollywood where I remember catching a glance of Al Gore, when he was vice-president.
One night, I saw her at some event at the Freedom Forum. I don't recall her name and her facial features are long embedded somewhere in my subconscious where I can't reach them. I do know that she was beautiful; in fact, she was fine, gorgeous, a physical manifestation of a tall drink of water flavored with spice. I managed to talk to her. I couldn't tell you how and I couldn't tell you what we talked about. I only hope I didn't sound like a fool. I think she smiled and may have laughed at my witticisms. Maybe, I'll say.
We did have a connection. We had both, at different times, attended a high-school journalism workshop that my hometown newspaper put on.
We parted ways after the event was over, and I left...without her number. I had no game, obviously. And the weight of a wasted opportunity dawned on me later when I had gotten back to the dorms at Georgetown. I knew I had to rectify this.
That's why I found myself going through the telephone book looking up her names and dialing the phone (this was in the age before IPhones, of course). I likened myself to be a Bob Woodward doing my own romantic investigation.
After about an hour, I got her number and I called and we talked. She wasn't annoyed. And I wasn't stupid enough to tell her all I had gone through to get to hear her voice, lest I be accused of stalking. In my mind, I was being persistent.
No, it didn't work out. It didn't even have much of a beginning for it not to work out. I don't think we even went out on a date, though I believe I did ask. My having no game caught up with me, pushing so hard that I seemed desperate. And no real woman wants a desperate man. I learned that the hard way.
Still, the lesson didn't sink in all the way because several years later, after I had graduated and settled into a small town for my first newspaper job, I caught wind of a girl who might like me. I didn't figure all this out until close to when she was graduating from the college where I met her while working on a story about an administrator there.
I got her number and called her. I didn't get her but instead left her a voice mail of me reciting a Langston Hughes poem. She called back, leaving a message. She seemed both flattered and somewhat flabbergasted. I don't think she knew what to do and she was leaving town anyway so she never called back. She fluttered away into that pile I was collecting categorized as lost opportunities.
Back then, I didn't know what I was doing. Some days, I wonder if I know now. But I knew what I wanted and went after it.
When we're young, we aren't always cautious. We're reckless, mistaking our youth for armor against pain and death. And our recklessness leads us down dark paths. But it also leads us onto other more wondrous paths. It leads us to love, or at least the possibility of love.
I think about romantic comedies and how they always end with someone running through an airport or traffic and end up standing in front of that one person, blurting out an eloquent yet jumbled speech about love and "you're the one for me" and "I can't live without you in my life." Then the two lovebirds live happily ever after.
But there's this poetry in how love makes us abandon reason and do some dumb shit. I mean, really dumb shit, like leaving Langston Hughes poems on someone's voice mail or refusing to hear the "no" in a woman's not calling you back after that first or second date. It's the warmth of their lips on yours feeling like a high you can't get enough of. The sound of their voice after a long day at work. Your hand on the small of their back being that home you two have built without the benefit of four walls.
Love is worth all of the crazy at the end and even if it breaks your heart a few times, it's worth going after again until you get it right.
So I guess I'm waiting for another chance to get my hands dirty.
