April 25:
This morning, Jim and I were lying in bed, being lazy. If he had his way, Jim wouldn’t let me out of bed till noon every day. Whenever I try to get up, he tackles me and I have to stay.
I can’t help but wonder if he was like this with his other girlfriends. I know there have been a lot of other girls before me and sometimes it bothers me. I wish I could be the first. I mean, I know he’s 32, so obviously it would be weird if he hadn’t had any girlfriends before. But the thing is, even though I’m 30, I’ve never been in love before now. Not even close, really. And I think that he has.
“Who was your first girlfriend?” I asked him out of nowhere.
He looked surprised by the question. “My first girlfriend? Why?”
“Just curious.”
He smiled distantly. “Her name was Ann,” he said. “I was a junior in high school, sixteen, I think.”
I ran my hand through his hair absentmindedly as he talked. I was surprised to hear he had a girlfriend back in high school. In my experience, guys who like Star Trek tend not to date in high school. Neither do unattractive girls. I never got a date in high school, but Jim did. I guess it was a testament to how cute and charming he is.
“We dated about six months,” he said. “That’s like an eternity in high school. I can’t even remember why we broke up. I think she joined the track team and we didn’t have time to hang out anymore.”
“Was she pretty?” I asked.
“Pretty?” Jim repeated.
“You know.”
He shrugged. “I guess so. Not as pretty as you are.”
Sometimes I find it maddening that Jim won’t admit that other girls aside from me are attractive. I mean, I guess it’s good, in a way. I wouldn’t want him to be ogling other girls. But I know he’s dated some really hot girls and I wish he’d just admit it. I know where Jim’s high school yearbook is and I have this feeling that if I looked up this Ann girl, she’d be drop dead gorgeous.
“What about after her?” I asked.
“Uh, well, I got into my accident in my senior year of high school,” he said. “So no girlfriends for a while after that. I think the next girl I dated seriously was when I was maybe 21, at the end of my junior year of college. Elisa. We broke up when college ended and I came here for grad school and she went east to be a lawyer. Neither of us wanted to stay in Ohio.”
“So it wasn’t that serious?”
He shrugged again. “Guess not.”
I wanted to ask again if Elisa was pretty, but I knew I’d never get a straight answer out of him anyway. “How about after her?”
Jim made a face at me. “Are you serious? You really want to hear my entire dating history?”
Yes, I did. “Well…”
“What about you?” he asked. “You haven’t mentioned even one guy you’ve ever dated.”
Right. I’ve let Jim believe that there were other guys I’ve dated seriously, just like he’s had other girls, mostly because I don’t want him to realize how pathetic my dating life has been. I didn’t have one date in high school or college. Most of my “relationships” didn’t last more than a few months. If I was honest with him, he’d think there was something wrong with me. And I guess there is, but he’s too blind to notice somehow.
“Never mind,” I said.
Luckily, Jim didn’t press the matter further. Instead, he rolled over and draped his arm around me. “Anyway, none of those other women matter,” he said. “You’re the only one that matters.”
A question had been swirling around my head for a while now and I just had to ask. “Jim,” I said. “Do you think I’m better than those other girls?”
He frowned. “Better?”
“I mean,” I stammered. “What do you like better about me than about them?”
He stared at me for a minute with his nice blue eyes. Finally, he said, “I love you more. A lot more. It’s not even close, really.”
His answer filled me with a warm, comforted feeling. I sighed and closed my eyes as he hugged me, and even though it was eleven in the morning, I drifted off to sleep.
April 29:
Sometimes I look in the mirror and I genuinely don’t get it. I know there is someone for everyone, blah blah blah, but I really just don’t understand how Jim could look at me and say, “I want to have sex with her.” And especially not, “I want to marry her.” I really don’t understand it at all.
I guess men have had sex with me before, so I’m clearly not unfuckable. (Is that a word?) I don’t know what it would take for a woman to be unfuckable. I see all these morbidly obese women with babies, so I’m thinking they must be having sex. I’m not morbidly obese, at least, or even obese. So I’ve got that going for me.
Still, I know Jim could do a lot better than me. There’s a part of me that wonders if he thinks so too sometimes.
The few times a guy has come out and told me he liked me, like Vincent, my self-esteem has just shot through the roof. I imagine that pretty girls get hit on all the time so they get a daily dose of self-esteem. I would probably feel really good about myself if I had experienced that my whole life. It’s not fair. I’m a good person. I’m smart. That should be enough.
May 1:
I guess if there was one thing I’d change about Jim, sometimes I wish he were less of a flirt. Not that he ever hits on other women, because he definitely does not, but he often flirts. I don’t think he can help it… it’s just his personality. If he hadn’t flirted with me on the phone on the computer help line, we might not be together now. Of course, that definitely doesn’t make me feel any better about it.
When we go out to dinner, he always flirts with the waitresses, which bothers me proportionally to how attractive the waitress is. Even if the waitress is sixty years old, Jim will flirt with her. Like I said, that’s just what he does. But obviously, it doesn’t bother me if the waitress is someone’s grandma. But if she’s some twenty year old with a short skirt, it bothers me more.
He’s too outgoing, too likable. I know those aren’t specifically bad qualities, but sometimes they are. It makes me feel comparatively introverted and unlikable. And sometimes when I want to just have a private dinner with my fiancé, it’s annoying that he insists on charming the waitress. And the waitress always eats it up. I’ve never seen him be unsuccessful in flirting with a waitress.
Tonight we were at dinner and our waitress was absolutely gorgeous. In looks, she reminded me of Jim’s last ex-girlfriend, who was also a waitress. Jim was joking around with her about the food while I sat there, feeling frumpy and jealous. “Now do I have your absolute guarantee that the chicken sandwich is delicious?” he asked her.
“Oh, absolutely,” she said.
“And what is your method of quality control?” he asked. “Do you taste each individual sandwich?”
She giggled and I rolled my eyes. I’m sure she had a lot of tables to serve, but Jim is so good at flirting that women just eat it up. They love him.
After the waitress (finally!) took our order and left the table, I felt all sulky. I didn’t want to look at Jim and I kept tapping my spoon against the table like I was five years old. He noticed, of course.
“Okay, Tessie,” he said. “What’s wrong?”
I thought about sulking a little more and making him draw it out of me, but that never works. Jim and I decided early on that we weren’t going to play games with each other, so whenever I try to pull something like that, he always shames me into acting like an adult. “Why do you always flirt with waitresses?” I blurted out.
He blinked. “What?”
“You were flirting,” I said. “With that waitress. Don’t try to deny it.”
He frowned and looked over his shoulder at where our waitress was taking some other table’s order. “Oh. You call that flirting? I was just joking around. I don’t know. So what?”
Yeah, he said he was just joking around, but he never ever does it with male waiters.
“What if I flirted with random men? You wouldn’t like that.”
He shrugged. “You could if you wanted to.”
“It seriously wouldn’t bother you?”
“It seriously wouldn’t,” he said. He put his hand on mine and smiled. “It doesn’t mean anything. I know you love me.”
“That’s not the point,” I said, although I knew I wasn’t going to win this argument.
Jim glanced back at our waitress again. “What, you think she LIKES me? Come on. She’s just being friendly.”
“Maybe she likes you…”
He laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, right.”
I don’t know why he acts like he’s so undesirable. He’s dated tons of really attractive women. But then again, I’m sure he’s had his share of rejection.
“Look, Tessie,” he said. “There’s one thing you can know with a hundred percent certainty and that’s that I’m NEVER going to cheat on you. Never.”
I looked him in the eyes and the thing is, I believed him. If flirting is one of Jim’s bad qualities (and I’m not even sure it is), then loyalty is one of his best. I don’t think Jim would ever consider messing around with another woman behind my back. I can’t even imagine it.
So, in summary, I guess I can deal with a little flirting. Actually, it’s not so bad. Once or twice, we’ve even gotten a free dessert out of it.
May 3:
Yesterday was Jim’s birthday. He turned 33. Happy birthday, honey.
I thought I could make a party for him or something, but he told me he wanted to spend the day with me, just the two of us. I asked him what he wanted to do, and out of nowhere, he said he wanted to go to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk.
“In the warm California sun?” I asked. (That’s from the commercial.)
Jim stuck out his tongue at me. “Come on, it’ll be fun. I’ll drive.”
Although the weather was nice enough to go to the beach, I wasn’t too excited about it. I didn’t like the idea of prancing around in a bathing suit. I do not have a bathing suit kind of body. And to be totally honest, neither does Jim. I don’t know why he wants to go to the beach. I can’t even imagine how he’d manage.
“I don’t want to go to the beach,” he said, reading my mind. “But we can go to the boardwalk. Have some fried Twinkies? Come on, Tessie, it’s my birthday. Let me have a fried Twinkie.”
I couldn’t deny him a fried Twinkie.
So on the morning of his birthday, we drove out to Santa Cruz, in the direction of the ocean. I sang him happy birthday in the car and Jim talked about how he couldn’t believe he was 33 today. “I’m so old,” he said. “I’m in my mid-thirties.”
“33 isn’t mid-thirties,” I said.
“Yeah, it is,” he argued. “33 through 38 define mid-thirties.”
I thought a minute. “I guess you’re right. Wow, you’re old.”
He laughed. “I told you. I’m robbing the freaking cradle.”
I don’t think anyone in the world would say that marrying a girl just over two years younger is robbing the cradle, but it was nice of him to say it. “Whenever I have a birthday,” I said, “I always think about what my ten year old self would think of my current life. Like, would they be happy if they saw me right now.” At my last birthday, I think my answer to that question would have been no. Maybe next year, the answer will be yes.
“My ten year old self, huh?” Jim said. “I’m going to have to say that I think my ten year old self wouldn’t have been too psyched about being a quadriplegic.”
“Oh,” I mumbled, realizing what a stupid thing I had said.
“However,” he went on. “My ten year old self was an idiot. I have a great life. I’ve got a kickass job and I’m marrying a woman that I love. Not too bad for 33.”
I have to admit, Jim has an amazing ability to find happiness in anything. I’ll bet there are people out there who would be depressed in his situation, but he is never depressed. I think he truly believes he has a great life. Which makes me feel pretty good about myself.
Anyway, it turns out that it wasn’t beach weather after all, so I didn’t have to worry about a bathing suit. We both wore pants and jackets. We strolled along the boardwalk, which smelled really strongly of fried food. I asked Jim if he wanted to get that Twinkie, but apparently he was kidding about that. I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to taste (or at least SEE) a fried Twinkie, but I was too embarrassed to order one for myself.
“I haven’t been on a roller coaster since I was a kid,” I commented, as we passed by this ultra-old roller coaster. It looked like it was about to collapse any second into a big pile of dust.
“I don’t think it would be too wise for me to get on this thing with a broken neck,” Jim said. “But you can go ahead if you want.”
“That’s okay.”
“Come on, go for it.”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Jim grinned at me. “What’s wrong? Scared?”
“Did it ever occur to you I might be pregnant?”
Jim’s jaw dropped open. I had been joking, of course. I actually just finished my period, so there was no way I could have been pregnant. And in general, Jim doesn’t ejaculate, so it’s not likely. But I guess it would have been possible, had I not just gotten my period. And also, I’m on birth control pills, which are supposed to improve my skin but they don’t. Before his imagination got too carried away, I quickly said, “I’m kidding.”
“Oh,” he said.
I couldn’t tell if he was relieved or disappointed.
“Too bad,” he said. “That would have been an awesome birthday present.”
Disappointed, I guess. Damn. Actually, no, it’s good. I want kids in the near future too, so I’m glad we’re on the same page. I decided at that moment that I’m going to stop my birth control pills. I hate pills anyway.
We went inside and played several rounds of Skee-ball. Is there any better game than Skee-ball? Jim declared himself the Skee-ball master and proceeded to kick my ass in several head to head games. Considering he has limited use of his hands, he had pretty wicked aim. We collected enough tickets that we were able to purchase a really crappy stuffed bear.
After that, we went back outside and Jim suggested going on the Ferris wheel. I wasn’t very excited, but he really wanted to do it. He said they’d hold his wheelchair at the bottom. Honestly, if it were me, I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving my wheelchair with some random guy, but he is very trusting. Maybe it’s a Midwest thing. Anyway, I was kind of relieved when there were steps to get to the Ferris wheel and Jim decided it wasn’t worth it.
After the failed attempt at the Ferris wheel, we went out to dinner. The waiter gave us a secluded booth and Jim got out of his chair to slide in next to me. Honestly, he couldn’t keep his hands off me. I don’t know if it was the fresh air or what, but he was all over me while we were waiting for our food. We were basically making out like a couple of teenagers, which is not totally unusual for us. When I looked up for a minute, I noticed we were getting quite a few stares. Oh well.
“You are so incredibly sexy,” Jim whispered in my ear. “This is the best birthday I’ve ever had.”
“Okay,” I said, “but you know, maybe we shouldn’t have sex right here in the restaurant.”
Jim laughed and pulled away from me. “Sorry, I guess I got carried away.”
I smiled. “That’s okay. It’s your birthday.”
“You think we’ll still be like this when we’re fifty?” he asked me in a thoughtful voice.
“Like what?”
“You know,” he said. He grinned at me: “Madly in love.”
I had to laugh at the expression, although I knew his question was earnest. I guess at some point in every relationship, the initial infatuation wears off. I can’t imagine that Jim will be tearing my clothes off with his teeth when we’re fifty. But I love him so much and I want to believe that won’t fade away. “I think we’ll still be madly in love when we’re fifty,” I said.
“Good,” he said as he went back to kissing and groping me in a totally inappropriate way for a public restaurant. I didn’t stop him. I mean, it’s his birthday.