An apology to my fans, all three of you. I've been absent from the hallowed cyber halls of Trouble City for the last couple of weeks due to a crippling bout of writer's block.
Yes, it happens to everyone, especially to those with minimal talent and few prospects for achieving any sort of lasting success. I've been trying everything to break through my barriers: taking long walks, drinking heavily, watching movies, and - my favorite - leaning my palms against the shower wall as a torrent of water cascades about my drooping head. (Ask any dramatic TV actor... it's the best way to show your inner struggle.)
But my wife Suzie pretty much nailed it right on the head.
"Do you have an album or a song you want to talk about?" she asked.
"Yes," I mumbled under my breath in reply.
"What was that?" she demanded to know.
I took a deep breath so I could push out another "Yes" with a little more energy.
"Okay then! Quit being a sad sack and just start writing!" she exclaimed. She tossed her morning glass of chilled Sonoma pinot grigio in my face, and with her point made, she stormed off.
As I sat there, the salt of my tears mingling with the light accents of oak and boysenberry dripping from my eyelashes, I realized that she was right. There's no reason not to start stringing words together and aim for an end result where they make some sort of sense. When asked how to become an editor, George Lucas famously replied, "Start editing." Simple advice, but deep and full of Zen-ness when you think about it.
So here I sit, being a writer...by writing. And my dearest love's unflinching support of my creative endeavors has pointed me to the perfect subject about which to wax rhapsodic: Her! And me! And us! And how we came to be! It's a saga filled with pork sandwiches, laughter, sangria, kittens, passion, and sinful cohabitation... all set to the retro futuristic electronic funk sounds of...
DAFT PUNK.
The year 2000 was a big one for me. And by "big" I mean "stressful". I was working ten to fourteen hours every day of the week. I paid way too much in a nasty bidding war for a house. I had a major panic attack that almost burst my heart a few days before my birthday. I was so stressed out and borderline delusional over the summer that I destroyed relationships right and left. But I rallied, somehow, and got my feet under me. The first thing I did to right my floundering life was get the hell out of my souring job. I did some stealth interviewing, and in October, I finally achieved one of my major career goals by getting a great job at a cool startup in downtown San Francisco.
So I coasted into 2001 doing pretty well, all things considered. New house. Big-ass Sony Wega TV. Home theater system. Happy cats. Regular trips to Amoeba Music. Hiking all over the Bay Area. Softball. Life was great. The only thing missing was that certain someone special to share my budding success with. In February a good pal set me up with a friend of a friend, but that went nowhere. (Actually, it started out great but then got weird. I walked away, and she never reached out to find out where I went. So I guess that told me everything I needed to know!)
Around that time my coworker Paul told me about two friends of his who found incredible success in love through online dating. And I said "Hell no!" Now, remember, this was 2001, still sort of the "wild West" days of the Internet when it came to things like personal experiences online. Going on a pay site to find a girlfriend seemed like the last desperate gasp of the pathetic and unlovable. I couldn't bring myself to even consider it. But Paul explained it in a way that made incredibly clear sense: what's so bad about being able to specify exactly what you're looking for in a partner, and cut out the ones that don't fit? I found that I couldn't disagree with this argument. So I took the plunge, and joined one of the bigger dating sites. I wrote what I thought was a pretty decent profile, uploaded a picture, and sat back in anticipation of the hordes of lusty babes who would be breaking down my firewalls, hungry for the love of a decent man.
Over the next couple of weeks, I received a few matches every day. But none of them were really grabbing me. There was a lawyer who seemed okay, but she lived fifty miles away. (Thanks to the horrible traffic, fifty Bay Area miles is like two hundred regular city miles, so no thank you.) There was this elegant brunette who lived in the hills of Oakland, but by the time I replied to her she'd already met someone. There was a girl who liked 80s music, but she also liked dancing, and that's not my thing. So my experiment seemed to be a bust. No one was tripping my trigger.
And then... she appeared.
One of the earliest photos of the two of us. Aren’t we just adorable?
When I opened my daily email and saw her photo, I gasped a little. Her profile was fun and playful. She had a cool screen name. She had worked in Los Angeles as a publicist for years. She was gorgeous. She was the complete package. But... I mean, there was no way on God's green earth this angel, this paragon of female pulchritude, this hot piece of tail could ever possibly be interested in a simp like me.
To this day I have no idea how I found the mental strength to coerce my fingers into typing her a message and clicking "Send". But I did. And - holy crap - she wrote back! And she seemed interested in meeting me! I couldn't believe it.
Our first date was nice, but nothing earth-shaking. It was one of those perfunctory "getting to know you" lunches. According to Suzie, she wasn't repulsed by me, but then again she wasn't bowled over either. Until... I said something just as we were wrapping up that made her go, "Oh! This guy's a little dark! He's got an edge!" Neither one of us can remember what it was, but it must have been something pretty damn compelling, because two days later she called me to see if I wanted to hang out. Did I? Hellz yeah!
Let me tell you, there are dates... and then there are dates. I knew something special was happening from the moment I picked her up. You know how in the movies, when someone falls in love, you see the object of their affection haloed with rays of light? Well, I saw the same thing... except she was haloed by cats. Seriously, when she opened the door and stepped out to greet me, her three cats shot out from behind her, each one going a separate direction, like rays of feline light.
That was the start of what will probably always be the best date I've ever had. We went into San Francisco, and wandered through Golden Gate Park. We tried to rescue a small black feral kitten. We accidentally broke into the Japanese pagoda garden. We stopped at a great little restaurant in Haight Ashbury called Cha Cha Cha, where, in the enthusiasm of my budding smitten-ness, I accidentally showered her with shards of tortilla chips. (She says it was endearing, but had I noticed at the time, I would have been mortified.) We had dinner in Berkeley at a swanky Indian restaurant. We went back to her place and watched a movie. And then... her inner sorority girl got the better of her, and she shamelessly threw herself at me. I tried to say no, but I was too weak to resist her charms. (Remember those radiating cats. She'd already worn down my resolve with her cats.)
And from that moment on, we were together all the time. Seriously, apart from one short business trip she had to take a couple of weeks after we met, we spent every non-job-related minute together. After a couple of months, it was pretty clear that neither one of us were going anywhere, so I asked her to move in. Again, we were a perfect fit: I had a house without any furniture in it, and she had a storage unit filled with furniture that had no house to live in. She got her chocolate in my peanut butter. It was a win-win for everyone.
But before we took the big step of co-mingling our stuff, we spent some time getting my place in order. My house was nice on the outside, but inside, it was pathetic. Luckily, this bachelor pad void I was living in gave her a perfect palette onto which she could apply her interior design skills. She put together a color scheme for the various rooms, and after a quick trip to Home Despot, we got busy beautifying. I put my boombox in the dining room, in the center of the house, and tuned the dial to the only semi-decent radio station in the area. We had a modern alternative soundtrack to complement our days and days of work.
My hovel, before Suzie got down to business.
Now, here's one of the aggravating things about corporate radio stations that people may not remember: they tended to play the currently hot songs over and over and over. So after we listened to the same station for a good eight to nine hours, we heard the same set of songs multiple times. Many of them were nails-on-chalkboard irritating. But some of them were pretty damn enjoyable, and over the course of our HGTV-worthy decorating binge, they became our little "moving in together" soundtrack.
There was "When You're Falling", a collaborative folky world music jam between Afro Celt Sound System and some guy named Peter Gabriel. Another fave was "Imitation Of Life" by R.E.M. (It was this song, and its association with my new relationship, that pushed me over the edge into R.E.M. fandom.) There was even "Drops Of Jupiter" by Train, a song that I'm not too fond of, but in the context of what was going on, it was part of the fabric of the event.
But there was one song that stood head and shoulders above all of them. Wedged in among all the nu-folk and nu-metal and nu-hipster dreck, this tune stood out like a flashing beacon of pop awesomeness. It was this weird electronic retro-disco synthesizer opus that sounded like two robots in love were singing to each other. It was bouncy, light, summery, fun. It took all the drudgery out of rolling paint on a bare wall.
And the title was perfect! "Digital Love"! Computers are digital! And thanks to computers we met digitally! And we were now in love! Digitally! (I hope I made all that clear.) For a goofball who loves wordplay like I do, there was no further proof of our connection needed than this amazing coincidence. (Or... was it providence?...) I never got tired of "Digital Love", and learned enough of the lyrics to sing along every time it played.
At one point, as I was harmonizing with the robots (who I now know are two French musicians, thanks to buying their Discovery CD a few weeks after we finished), I looked across the living room at my new live-in lady friend, all sweaty and covered with splattered paint. And I couldn't help but feel this swelling of emotion in my chest, this incredibly joyful realization that something awesome was really happening. She caught me staring at her with my big cow-like moony love eyes, and probably thought she'd made a big mistake, but I did something goofy and made her laugh. Whew! Saved by my own stupidity!
Our wedding in Florence. Victory! (For nerds everywhere…)
I have continued to make her laugh (thereby distracting her from my pathetic nature) for years now. This week, we are celebrating the nineteenth anniversary of that first date. Nineteen years! I've spent over a third of my life with her, and I have to say, it's been fairly easy. Sure, we've had our ups and downs, both as individuals and as a couple... no two people can go through decades of being together and not have to deal with stuff. But really, if a relationship is hard, painful work... is it worth hanging onto? We've both experienced less-than-stellar partners back in the day, and there's absolutely no comparison to what we've created.
Our start may have been a little unorthodox, but I'll take digital love over regular love any time.
(Oh, and by the way, that thing earlier about tossing the pinot grigio in my face? Totally not true. It was a Bud Light.)
BIO
Don Stroud is not the famous actor and world-class surfer of the same name. He is the non-famous California transplant who became an award-winning film editor and struggling amateur screenwriter. He loves cats, sushi, comic books, movies, music, and Cherry Coke. What's that, dear? Oh yes: and his wife. You can follow him on Twitter, where he pops up sporadically, at @DonStroud2.