by Hope Tarr
But, hey, I got there! I was so happy to see the man I loved I almost kissed him too early, and I got totally tripped up on what was supposed to happen when, but whatever. I cried so hard that I dripped snot in front of all our friends and family! It’s cool, right? I’m sure nobody noticed. Maybe. Ha.
We did this wine ceremony where we poured two kinds of wine together and drank them to symbolize the mingling of our lives. Since we had the ceremony outside, a fly had the chance to swoop in and die in our wine right before we drank. To this day, my husband thinks I’m a big wussy because you can hear me dramatically whisper, “There’s a bug in it!” on our wedding video, but damn it, when you encounter a fly legs-up in your wine, it throws you. I still sipped, thank you very much, but I wasn’t about to take a big swig and risk swallowing a dead fly. Still, I loved this moment so much that I later wrote it into the mating ceremony of one of my novels. What started as a funny and slightly horrifying moment has stuck with me all these years as a reminder that we could face anything together.
Back to the romance that is getting married on a boat. During our first dance, the boat hit a wave created by a larger boat. Everybody braced for impact, and Tom and I almost fell over. It worked out okay. He grabbed me tight, we found our rhythm again, and his best man made catcalls about how Tom couldn’t wait to get me to the hotel room. Everybody laughed, and what could have been embarrassing was funny, and sweet.
Perfect.
Because, so what if a bug died in my wine? So what if I had to clutch my veil for dear life to keep it from blowing overboard? So what if we had to tell people not to bring gifts on board the boat due to Homeland Security? So what if I got yelled at by the ship’s captain for trying to head to the top deck before the groomsmen were in position? So what if everyone nearly fell over during the first dance? So what if I forgot the moves to “The Time Warp,” and my guests were royally confused about the fact that one of my attendants was a) a dude and b) not gay?
Oh. And then there was “mustard-gate.” During the reception, my new brother-in-law came over to angrily inform us that the dipping sauce for the chicken nuggets on the kids’ meals was not honey mustard but hot mustard. Like the eye-searing stuff you get in Chinese restaurants? So I do feel terrible about all the horrifyingly hot mustard sauce and wonder to this day if it was caterer retaliation for getting a low tip. I’m sorry, kids. Luckily there were few children in attendance, and even fewer who tried the dipping sauce.
At the end of it all, none of it matters except saying “I do” to the person you love. Well…we did have a really nice cake. It said, “Today I marry my friend.” And I did.
Honestly, though, I think whether you have a thousand people or none, whether it all goes right or nothing does, if you can just be glad to be together you’re golden.
We did choose to have our ceremony outside. I remember being grateful we had sun, because the days leading up had been dreary. Rainy. Cold. I felt like God smiled on us that day, and that was really all we needed. We had the sunshine and each other. What else did we really need?
All the flubs and mishaps got ironed out. I could have really gone insane over them, but saying, “It’ll be okay,” and focusing on what was right worked out pretty well. Because the reality was, it was already perfect.
I got to tell the man who seems to “get” me like nobody else how much I loved him in front of everybody. I got to hear him tell me I was beautiful, and for all my insecurities, that day I really believed him. I got to marry my best friend.
Yes, the reception started thirty minutes late, possibly due to the late arrival of the bride and the Dress Nazi. No, the boat didn’t leave without us.
Everything was perfect.
Elisabeth Staab still lives with her nose in a book and at least one foot in an imaginary world. She believes that all kinds of safe and sane love should be celebrated, but she adores the fantasy-filled realm of paranormal romance the best. She lives in Northern Virginia with her family and one big scaredy cat where she loves to spend time with good friends, good music, good beverages, and good books (when she isn’t making characters fall in love, that is). She digs cats, coffee, sexy stories, and friendly things that go bump in the night. Visit Elisabeth online at www.elisabethstaab.com.
Holding Out for a Hero
By Leslie Carroll
In February 2006, I decided to take control of my romantic destiny. Divorced for a decade, I had spent the preceding few years in a long-distance relationship that, as the months went on, grew more distant in every way. This wasn’t how I’d pictured spending the so-called best years of my life. I wanted to wake up next to the man I loved every morning. The only problem was, evidently, I hadn’t yet met That Guy. It was time to reclaim my self-esteem.
So I ended the stagnant relationship. Then I did something that one of my heroines might have done, but I’d ordinarily not have had the chutzpah to do myself. In fact, the heroine of my first published novel, Miss Match, did do something similar. Kitty Lamb enrolled with a matchmaking service. I joined an Internet dating site, under the safety of the pseudonym “romancenovelist.”
I’ve always believed that by expressing your desires aloud, you can make them manifest. So I put words out into the ether.
I enrolled for only one month—not because I expected a Happily Ever After within thirty days, but as an exercise more than anything else. The format for creating my Internet profile allowed me to focus on where I was at that stage in my romantic life, where I’d been, and where it was I truly wanted to be instead. How could I find the right man if I had lost myself? My goal was to become emotionally healthy again after dwelling too long in Doormat Land.
“I give all for love,” I wrote in the “About Me” section, adding that I was “seeking a truly chivalrous (though playful) man, honorable and unafraid of commitment. No ‘fair weather’ romantics, please!” I warned. “I don’t want a man who tends to ‘fall off the planet’ when I need him most—in the moment of jubilation when I want to share my joy and successes with him; and in those moments of disappointment and despair when I need his strength.”
In the “I Am Looking For” essay, I said that I sought a man who was “true to his word,” having been burned by those who weren’t, yearning to meet “a giver, not a taker.”
“Can you be as ‘real’ as you are romantic?” I asked. “Even Lord Byron should not be allergic to cleaning up after himself, have no problem putting the toilet seat back down, and be capable of having a truly honest conversation about anything. Mutually nurturing; we are each other’s best friend, each other’s rock, each other’s greatest fan. We each appreciate the importance of a vital, monogamous sex life to a lasting relationship.”
I didn’t care if I seemed to be asking for the moon. How could I ever hope to find the right guy if I was dishonest about who I was and what I needed?
My technical skills being fairly limited, the only photo that I managed to upload successfully to my profile was the one my mother had nicknamed “Vogue meets Field & Stream,” taken during my first of perhaps three-ever fly-fishing excursions. There I am in waders, a plaid shirt and fleece jacket, Jackie O sunglasses, and a fur hat, proudly displaying on my line a rainbow trout (which, seconds after this photo op, was safely released).
I worried about that picture. Guys who expected to meet a real outdoorswoman might be dismayed to discover that I consider “roughing it” the furthest room from the pool, that I view nature as a spectator sport and will run only for a crosstown bus. But it was the only recent photo that flattered me, and it wasn’t a total misrepresentation. It showed that I was willing to try new things, wade out of my comfort zone—while retaining my own identity, at least from the neck up!
Five days after I joined the Internet dating site, on February 17, 2006, I received a lengthy e-mail from “sunshine42day.”
DEAR RN(A MEDIC FOR THE HEART?)
[And I think: This is promising; he has a sense of humor.]
I TAKE INTEGRITY
OVER ALLEGIANCE, PASSION OVER THE PRIDE IN THE EFFORT OVER EXPEDIENT SLOPPINESS. I MEASURE MYSELF NOT BY THE EYES OF OTHERS, BUT BY THE FACE I SEE DAILY IN THE MIRROR. I AM KIND, GENTLE, AND LOVING BUT NOT WEAK. I AM PREPARED TO LEAD BUT EQUALLY READY TO FOLLOW, A TENDER HEART AND A TRUSTING SOUL. I GREATLY EXCEED THE THRESHOLD FOR LEAVING THE TOILET SEAT DOWN. FOR YOU: DOES YOUR WARDROBE INCLUDE BLACK DRESS TO HIKING BOOTS, DO YOU AGREE THERE CANNOT BE TOO MANY HUGS SHARED BETWEEN LOVED ONES, AND THAT ANYTHING CAN BE DISCUSSED BECAUSE THE DESIRE FOR A RELATIONSHIP CAN TRUMP WHATEVER CHALLENGE—WHEN THERE IS COMPLETE COMMUNICATION? PLEASE LET ME KNOW IF YOU’D WELCOME ANOTHER NOTE.
He signed it from a location that I knew to be a major war zone—a hotbed, in fact—then added, “(BTW: I had to write this note four times to have it sent—a poor satellite signal.)”
Well! Someone who wanted to meet me so much that he retyped his letter of introduction four times merited a reply. Not only that, there was not one typo, not a single misspelling, and it was grammatically perfect. You laugh. But with an online name like “romancenovelist,” it was shocking how many men addressed a woman who clearly valued the written word with “Yo!” or “Hey!” followed by a string of incoherent, rambling, badly spelled sentences.
Not so, sunshine42day, aka Scott. According to his profile, his ideal relationship was a “commitment to communicate, honesty, respect, loyalty, affection, and shared values.” So far he was batting a thousand with me. “I am not perfect, but I try, and I seek a woman with flaws that can mesh with mine. If you want to know more, you’ll have to write.”
Write I did. Marveling at how he had somehow found me from a remote base on the front lines where he was the chief, in charge of hundreds of men of more than one nationality. Especially when I had stated that, after an unsuccessful long-distance relationship, I was looking to meet a guy who lived within five miles of the Upper West Side of Manhattan!
Scott was divorced, with a teenage son who lived with his mother. A nonsmoking native Californian, he described himself as “athletic,” and we shared the same tastes in music and old movie classics. Our religious backgrounds were similar. He had checked off the same cultural “likes” I had, although he was a lot more outdoorsy. Little black dress to hiking boots? (I did own a pair from those few fly-fishing excursions.) Yes, but not worn at the same time, I told him, or I would look like a Fashion Week victim.
Within twenty-four hours we had exchanged private e-mail addresses. A few days later, we closed our memberships with the online dating site to pursue a correspondence on our own. We had already lived and loved enough to be able to learn from our failures, to admit the mistakes of our pasts so that this time we would not repeat them with each other.
Like the heroines and heroes of the epistolary romances of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and so many of their real-life counterparts whose courtships were restricted to correspondence, our letters chronicled our love story as it unfolded. Because half a world separated us with no hope of meeting in person until he received leave to return to the States for a few days the following month, our exchanges were limited to words and a few photographs.
We told each other everything, writing several times a day in long, single-spaced e-mails. The day after his introductory note, Scott impressed me with his literary knowledge, making a reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s poignantly ironic short story “The Great Stone Face.” His e-mail ended with the words:
Kind words supported by deeds,
should be no surprise,
and accepted with grace
for two who love one another.
Under the poem he added, (“just something that popped up as a thought—thought I’d share it.”)
Love? Had I met my match already? It was too soon. Things were happening so fast. Be careful what you wish for, said the angel on my shoulder. Or was it a little imp?
So I wanted to make sure Scott saw my “flaws,” too. I told him how busy I was, how many hours I spent at the computer researching and writing. Maybe I was pushing him away because I was frightened. “And, oh, I still sleep with the toy stuffed bunny I’ve had since I was three months old,” I added, “and my twenty-year-old teddy bear.” Making sure he understood, and was prepared to accept my whimsy. “Love me, love my bunny (and my bear),” I cautioned.
That’s okay, he replied. “To act like responsible adults, and feel the exuberance of childhood, that should stay with us.”
After a week of copious correspondence, I had to hear his voice. I still had no idea how he sounded. Tenor or baritone? Did he lisp? Because all the guys on the base shared only two phones, Scott had to reserve it. On the appointed evening, nearly two weeks after our first e-mail, I answered the phone on the first ring. The delay of a few seconds while the connection kicked in seemed like an eternity. Scott sounded gentle and kind. His voice was soft. I wondered what side of him his buddies and subordinates saw. At one point, we both began crying from the sheer joy of being able to have a conversation. We take so much for granted every day that you fail to realize what a treat a simple phone call can be to someone posted to a remote part of the world, with little time or opportunity to connect with his loved ones.
We made plans to meet in New York City during his leave. Meanwhile, we would maintain our daily correspondence and speak over the phone as often as he could call.
Only six days into our epistolary romance, Scott had begun dropping innuendos into his letters. Three weeks after we exchanged our first online greeting, he was certain he wanted to marry me. On March 2, he wrote: “We are soul mates.”
This rapidity of affection happens to characters in romance novels and, in a famous observation of Mr. Darcy’s, not to real people. It was hard for me to conceive that my life was quickly emulating an implausible plotline. I was on the verge of obtaining my heart’s desire—yet at the same time, was terrified of the prospect.
I admitted that I had emerged battle-scarred from the minefields of romance. Scott’s exuberance scared me. As easy as it would have been for me to begin redecorating castles in the air, now I was slowing down through all the yellow lights. Perhaps he didn’t deserve such prudence. But how could I be certain I wasn’t rushing into anything I would later regret?
He had been planning to transfer to New York City after this overseas tour. Our next step was to get engaged. But you’ve never met each other, our friends and relatives insisted. My literary agent and my best friends warned that he could be an ax murderer for all I knew. Convinced that I must be a gold digger, Scott’s sisters scolded him for having a too trusting heart.
Was this really my life? Signing on to The Knot Web site to scope out wedding-dress silhouettes less than a month after posting my dating profile online?
I sent him care packages through a U.S. Army address. I was surprised with gifts of impossibly gorgeous arrangements from Belle Fleur in Chelsea. Several continents away, Scott had researched the most romantic florist in New York City. When I told him about my visit to The Jewish Museum to see a Sarah Bernhardt exhibit, he began to call me his “faraway princess,” a reference to Bernhardt’s eponymous role in Edmond Rostand’s 1895 romance La Princesse Lointaine.
During enemy shelling, while the men were hunkered inside a bunker, as mortars rained down about them, he took my photo, lovingly protected by a plastic sleeve, from his pocket and showed it to a colleague, in rapture about the woman he had decided to marry.
On March 14, I received the following e-mail:
I MENTIONED IN MY LAST THAT I WAS JUST ABOUT TO HEAD OFF TO A MEETING WITH MY TEAMMATES, AND THAT I STILL HAD A FEW TEARS IN MY EYES. I MANAGED TO CLEAR AWAY THE TEARS, AT LEAST SO THEY WERE NOT SO VISIBLE (AND I WAS AIDED BY THE DARK BUNKER WE MEET IN), AND TOWARDS THE END OF THE MEETING, I MADE AN ANNOUNCEMENT. AFTER I FINISHED THE MORNING BRIEFING/PLANS PORTION, AND OTHERS PROVIDED THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS, I ASKED FOR ALIBIS (THIS IS THE TIME FOR OTHERS TO BRING UP RELATED BUT NOT CRITICAL MISSION ESSENTIAL ISSUES), AND AFTER THAT WAS DONE, IT WAS MY TURN. I TOLD
THEM I FOUND MY SOUL MATE, WAS IN LOVE, WANTED TO MARRY THIS WOMAN, AND BY THE WAY, SHE HAD A WRITE-UP IN THE “DAILY VARIETY” ABOUT HER BOOK, PLAY DATES, BEING PICKED UP BY AN ENTERTAINMENT PRODUCTION COMPANY. THERE WAS SILENCE, AND I ADJOURNED THE MEETING. AFTERWARDS, FOUR OF THE FELLOWS CAME UP TO ME AND NOTED THAT THE GLOBAL WAR ON TERROR (GWOT) STOPPED FOR A ROMANTIC MOMENT, MAYBE FOR THE FIRST TIME, AT LEAST THEY HAD OBSERVED, IN THEIR SERVICE ABROAD SINCE LATE 2001. THEY WERE SERIOUS, AND WHAT WAS IMPORTANT, THEY APPRECIATED THAT IT WAS OK TO SHOW A VULNERABLE SIDE, AND ALTHOUGH NOT STATED, IT WAS ACKNOWLEDGED THAT IT WAS A BEAUTIFUL THING TO SEE ROMANCE, THOUGHTFULNESS AND HOPE, IN A ROUGH AND TUMBLE ENVIRONMENT. IT WAS HEARTENING BECAUSE THEY MUST HAVE HAD THEIR OWN SIMILAR THOUGHTS OF LOVE BACK HOME OR HOPEFULNESS FOR THOSE WHO WOULD LIKE SOMETHING MORE THAN THE SATISFACTION THEY GET IN PLACES LIKE THIS. LIKE A LOT OF THINGS, IT IS GOOD TO GET SOME THINGS OUT IN THE OPEN, AND I DID, AND MAYBE JUST FOR A MOMENT, AT LEAST IN THE MINDS OF MY MEN, THEY HAD A REMINDER THAT BEYOND THIS WAR AND SPARTAN LIFE WE LEAD HERE, THE BEAUTY OF ROMANCE AND LOVE IS CRADLED WITHIN, AND PROTECTED BY THE BRUTALITIES OF WAR. A LITTLE MOMENT, IN A FARAWAY PLACE, YOU WERE A PART OF IT, YOU MAKE THIS POSSIBLE, AND ALL THIS HAPPENED PROBABLY WHILE YOU SLEPT. YOU SEE, THE MAGICAL EFFECT YOU HAVE ON ME, US AND MAYBE EVEN FOR OTHERS TOO. WE’LL CONTINUE TO LEAD BY EXAMPLE, AND DO SO TOGETHER. I LOVE YOU.
Later that month, I received a phone call from the office of The Players, the social club on Gramercy Park founded in 1888 by actor Edwin Booth. Although I was the first woman to become a third-generation member, financial constraints had compelled me to take a leave of absence. “Your dues have been paid through the end of the year,” I was informed. My benefactor wished to remain anonymous. I felt like Pip in Great Expectations. But, seriously, there was more than one person who could have stepped into the breach. It might have been my mentor. “I don’t want to thank the wrong person,” I told the club. “It would be mortifying. Just tell me the location from which the call was placed.”