"Don't Stop Believing"

If you don't recognize the reference in the title, you should probably stop reading now. (side note: at a party on Saturday night, when the name "Steve Perry" came up, a woman said, "Isn't he an actor or something?" I thought Matty was going to have an aneurysm right there) This post is going to be a completely self-indulgent ode to my husband, as I am tired of talking about babies, the miracle of life, etc. Instead, as I sit around doing nothing, I'm going to wax nostalgic about my Matty.

So, in an effort to put this all down the way I'd like, I'll divide our life together in to segments: dating/pre-Zoey/post-Zoey. This entry, I'll focus on the dating part, though as you'll see, the words "dating" don't really fit.

Dating: When we met, neither of us really had our "act together." I was finishing my Master's Thesis on Lee Smith, having just worked extensively on Zora Neale Hurston. I lived with a few people--neither of whom I ever talk to anymore--and really was fed up with men in general. Graduate school was terribley disappointing in the guy department for me; I had hoped to meet brilliant men, but instead met lazy poetic boys or budding alcoholics. Matty was working odd jobs (I'll leave that to your imagination), as he was recovering from the trainwreck his life had recently become. Our first rendevous was at the Dover Public Library book sale. In my car, when we were sharing what we had purchased, we were a little taken aback by the fact that we both bought a copy of Catcher in the Rye, which we both already owned. We have since found out that Mark Chapman, the man who shot John Lennon, also felt compelled to buy multiple copies of the novel. At the time, I felt some cosmic shift occurred. Thus, by the way, the middle name Holden for Ollie. (AWWWWW... isn't that cute?? I wasn't going to share that tidbit, but I really do like that part of our story)

Due to the "cosmic shift" which occurred, I found myself living with Matty in all of three days. As we like to say, he invited me for dinner and I never left. Which, for the most part, is true. He made a chicken stirfry. I'd like to defend myself a little, but really can't. I will say that it was very convenient to live together immediately, as we never saw each other. He worked two jobs while I went to graduate school and worked at Foster's Daily Democrat. We spent most of our time sitting at the kitchen table, playing scrabble, drinking hot chocolate, talking in to the very early morning. I say "the kitchen table," not "our kitchen table" because Matty lived in a two room, furnished apartment. Everything came with the apartment, including the mugs from which we drank the hot chocolate. I have to admit that when we moved, I took "my" mug with me. I left a comforter on the daybed though. Yep. We slept in a daybed, with a dog. We began the now famous "book" to record our scrabble games in. Fiercely competitive, we used a blank book that Tim's mom (former college boyfriend) had given me for my birthday, to write one single taunting line to the loser of our scrabble games. We frequently integrated the winning word (or made up word) in to the entry. Here are some samples:

12.27.97 "I kicked your ass on the inaugural game." (AC)
12.28.97 "4 Succcessful challenges of your words--college girl!" (MC)

Then, of course, is the 1.5.98 marathon:

1.5.98 "Tie game 213-->213!!!"
1.5.98 "How in God's name do you expect to win when I get 4 Triple word scores???? 33, 33, 36, 27 . . . Boys rule, girls drool" (MC)
1,5,98 "Choke. Who goes to bed the loser--Boo!" (AC)


We have kept up our scrabble tradition ever since. The overall average right now is Matt 35 games, me 25 games, with 2 ties. I can brag that I won the two games we played in 2007. It truly reflects a different life when we used to play three games in a night, now we played two games in a year. In fact, I am going to demand our first game of 2008 tonight--pathetically late in March, but better late than never.

Random facts of those days: one of the first things I was impressed with about Matty is that he knew how to iron his own clothes and cook; this Broadway apartment's shower was IN the kitchen. You stepped out of this weird little closet, right in to the kitchen; Matty actually worked with Ruthie, one of the girls I lived with when I met him; Nate, my old neighbor, whom I secretly loved, was an employee of Matt's when he owned the bagel shop--the coffee Nate left for me was stolen from there; Ike, Matty's dog, ate my brand new Doc Martins and underwear within the first week I lived there; we played pool at Buster's fairly regularly; our front neighbor's name was "Lucky" and we are fairly certain he ran a prostitution ring; Matty met Rick Landon, who offered him his big break at Anderson; I still remember lying in bed, talking about how this new job would change everything (little did we know that it would eventually land us in Buffalo, NY); Matty wanted to be a writer, even then, but never really spoke of it; I began my teaching career at Portsmouth High School after Matty set up an interview for me for my internship; I smoked A LOT back then; we both swore quite a bit; going to the Strand for a movie and Cafe on the Corner for coffee was a regular passtime; we both named Some Kind of Wonderful as our favorite movie.

Matty was really different back then--socially phobic to a degree. However, that worked in my favor because I had never had a guy who wanted to hang out with me so much and so intensely/intently. Those who know him now would never recognize the shy, quiet, guy I was "dating." We did not have an infatuation period--I knew the complications of his life and he knew mine--right from the start, at Hilton Park, sitting in the old green Cav, chainsmoking and spilling our guts. It worked somehow to know that the other person had a trunkload of baggage. We just decided that we'd team up for life to lug all the baggage around, hopefully getting rid of some along the way, knowing we'd probably pick up more. It has worked.

That first date traipsing in the rain from the booksale, on to Bickford's in Portsmouth, then to Hilton park, then to Cafe on the Corner for the very first scrabble game (where Matty impressed me by winning), was November 8th, 1998. Those days were marked by Sweetland Diner, staying up until the wee hours of the morning, late mornings, endless debates, new beginnings. What I liked about Matty, and still do, is represented in the picture at the beginning of this blog entry. I liked that he was always reaching for the top. No matter what he was doing--even if it was selling credit cards--he wanted to be good at it, the best. If it were a silly scrabble game, he wanted to kill me at it. If it were a game of pool, we'd battle game after game. If it were a debate, he had to bury me. It might sound negative to some people, but I love/d the passion he brought to everything. Maybe it was all the wanna-be hippies I had spent the previous 6 years with, but I was ready for someone who believed in something (though most of the time we disagreed back then!). I was ready for someone with drive, determination, and the ability to overcome their past. For me, that was crucial. I had a past of my own that needed overcoming, and with Matty on my team, I knew I could. He didn't indulge my craziness; he showed me that the right reaction to crazy is crazy. Situations are situations. Good and bad are cycles. Going through things together, instead of around them alone would make life meaningful.

Those early days, though we didn't have much of anything, were the basis of everything.