carry on, my wayward son

"I met my wife in English class. By just random chance, I was the only boy in the class. And I flirted with her. She was totally preppy. She would wear pennyloafers and a jacket - a blazer - to class every day, and I was the opposite. So I figured it was a little bit of the opposite attracts kind of business. I wrote her poems in class that, um, made fun of her. So, um. (rubs his eyes) I’m not crying, I’m not crying! Yes, I wrote her a poem. This is before we consummated our relationship. And by “consummated,” I mean gave each other hickeys. But I wrote her a poem about her beauty, in which I likened her nose to a great cathedral. I’ll tell you everything. We’ve been together for twenty-something years, so it’s a genuine love story. We went on a trip together. We went to Boston together for something called Head of the Charles, rowing? crew? boats? And we went there and there was some vodka. Somebody got somebody to go to the liquor store and buy the booze and vodka. This is inappropriate and I don’t know why I’m telling this story. Anyway, we got a little drunk, we were in high school, we went back to a hotel room, with a bunch of other people, I might add - we were very virginal at the time. And then, part of which I had to go to my dad’s, and she had to go do some other things, and so we met back at school on the bus. And I noticed that Vicki had hickeys all over her neck. And I was like, “Wow! Three days, and she already met somebody.” I didn’t say it to her face, but “Slut!” is what I thought. And then we got to talking, walking from the bus to our class and I asked her very eloquently if she would be interested in “a relationship,” because I didn’t know what else to say. So we’ve been stuck for some time now. But those hickeys, apparently, were from me. She had gone through the same thought process when she saw the ones on my neck. Neither of us had any recollection of that. We were both still - we both had preserved our delicate flowers of virginity on that weekend. But she also came back from that weekend bearing some bruises on her inner thighs. Which neither of us, again, can account for. Serious overshare just then. The message I’m trying to tell is that all good things begin with a blackout."